There were a lot of us around the breakfast, lunch or dinner table when I was growing up. I have 8 siblings. Oatmeal was not always a favored breakfast food, I remember one time when the leftover oatmeal we wouldn’t finish, ended up in a cake. But one hot breakfast cereal that I remember liking a lot, can’t speak for the others, was what my mom called Powerhouse Pudding (PHP). Basically, it was cream of wheat with added eggs, vanilla, and sugar. I don’t remember if it was made with milk or water. But it was a favorite of mine, and I made it for my kids when they were growing up.

Then allergies became an issue with our expanding family. First milk products, so the PHP was made with water, not milk. Then eggs, so the eggs dropped out of the recipe, but the vanilla and sugar still made it tasty. But as I sent the kids off to school with stripped down PHP, I sometimes felt bad for their teachers, all those carbs and no protein.

When Molly introduced me to delicious vegan Fronch toast, which was hard to tell from the usual, I started thinking about what else I could use the chickpea flour for. Sunday morning, I woke up with a yen for PHP. And just the Friday before, I had purchased Hempnut Milk at Whole Foods. I usually use Rice Dream as a milk substitute, but was intrigued because the hemp milk was higher in essential fatty acids and other nutrients. So, I modified my old  PHP recipe to see if I could approximate the breakfast from my youth.

I used 2.5 cups of hemp milk, added 1/2 cup of water  (for the altitude), 1/3 cup of cream of wheat, 2 tablespoons of chickpea flour (mixed together smoothly.) Added the cereal mix to the hot milk, stirred continuously over medium heat, added vanilla when it thickened. After I felt it was cooked adequately, I added sugar. I didn’t take a picture of the PHP in the bowl, with a banana cut up on top, like the food blogs, but I did enjoy it. The chickpea flour gave a creamy yellowish color to the cereal and extra protein, the hemp milk gave the cooked cereal a creamy texture, and the vanilla was just plain yummy. I probably negated positive healthful aspects of the cereal by adding sugar, but that’s the way I eat it. Overall, I found it to be a positive experiment. Maybe next time I’ll try it with just water, rather than hemp milk or rice dream and see if the texture is different.

Molly’s experience with vegan recipes has enriched my life. French toast and power house pudding, oh my…what next? maybe tapioca pudding.