Barley Porridge and What's Maddening about Andalucia

So it's the 9th now and Ronny's boss is still trying to find the missing accountant who has Ronny's set of documents for claiming unemployment benefits. Ronny was told he had 1 week to submit his papers and this was starting on the 7th so the number of days continues to dwindle as the elusive accountant is out having his vacation or whatever it is he's doing.

I had already foreseen that something like this might happen in Tokyo and I'm guessing that Ronny won't get his papers until the last day when he'll have to run to the unemployment office or more typically - he's going to get his papers AFTER the deadline.

This pretty much sums up what's maddening about living in Andalucia, which is lovely place in general but the work ethics of the local people isn't one of the nice things about this area.

Anyhow enough for my rant!

I had a lot of barley grits left over from yesterday so I thought I'd try and find other ways of using it.

I ended-up modifying the Hot Barley Breakfast with Honeyed Walnuts and it was good enough as warm breakfast cereals go, but I feel this could use a little more tweaking before it becomes heavenly.

Ingredients:

A handful of walnuts
Enough honey to cover them
1 dl Barley Grits
3 dl Water
1 Tsp Unrefined Salt
1 Tbsp Sugar (I used refined sugar but you can use brown sugar)
1/5 Vanilla Pod
1 Small Apple
Dash of Cinnamon
1 dl Milk or however much you prefer

Step 1: Preheat the oven to 180C or 350F. Mix the walnuts and honey in a bowl and then lay them out flat on oven paper and roast for 5 min. The roasting time will depend on the consistency of your honey. Mine was very thick so at around the 5 min. mark it turned into caramel and I had to take it out of the oven. Set these aside and let it cool.

Step 2: Put the barley grits, water, salt and vanilla pod into a pan and once it's come to a boil, let it simmer for 7 min. or until the barley grits reach the consistency of porridge.

Step 3: While you're doing this chop up 1/2 of the apple finely and peel the skin off the other half so that's it's ready for grating.

Step 4: Mix in the sugar and milk then turn off the heat. Remove the vanilla pod and grate in half of the apple. Add a dash cinnamon.

Step 5: Ladle the barley grits into two bowls. Top off with the chopped up apples and honey roasted walnuts....Enjoy!

Serves 2

*Note: I think I'll leave the cinnamon out next time as it seemed a tad overpowering versus the delicate vanilla flavor. The honey roasted walnuts were really delicious and were a perfect match with the barley grits. I also have a feeling bananas might be a better fit than apples. I wonder what else might be a better fit than apples? Does anyone have any suggestions?