The Fearless Foodie

By Scott Heiner

Mush!

I grew up in Morgan, Utah, a small farming community.  We were simple folk eating simple foods, basic country fare.

Every day, as a kid, for breakfast, the main dish was mush, AKA cracked-wheat hot cereal.  Every morning, without fail it was mush, accompanied by fruit and eggs.  Occasionally we’d have oatmeal instead of cracked wheat, but it was another kind of mush just the same.  I ate mush, mush and more mush.  A few times a year, we’d get a real treat by having Corn Flakes, Shredded Wheat or Rice Krispies, but that was a rare occasion.  Usually, it was mush!

When I was called on a mission to Japan, I thought I’d have a change of breakfast fare.  But guess what?  My mission president, a native Japanese man, had somehow discovered a new miracle food for breakfast that would greatly enhance our health and success.  He insisted that we all eat “mugi,” which was cracked wheat hot cereal!  I don’t know how he got that passion, but we all ate it.  Mush!

Japanese grocery stores don’t sell cracked wheat so we got it at farm feed outlets, sold as chicken feed.  The employees wondered why we strange American missionaries would keep chickens, but were astonished to learn that we don’t feed it to chickens; we cook and eat it ourselves!  The down side is that we would often find tiny little rocks in our mugi--or mush!

Sometime later, as a church youth leader, I went on a Pioneer Trek.  This is a 5-day experience in which the participants don pioneer clothes and reenact the trek of the early Mormon handcart pioneers.  It was a very physically challenging ordeal and we all got mighty hungry.  Guess what we ate each morning--oatmeal, cornmeal, or wheat mush!  After taking a taste, a lot of the kids refused to eat theirs so I happily accepted their mush.

On business trips to the Southeast U.S., I discovered grits which is standard breakfast fare with eggs and ham.  They don’t serve it in a bowl with sugar or milk but simply as a glob of grits on your plate topped with a pat of butter--but it’s still basically mush.

With all these mush experiences, as I grew older and wiser, I realized I actually like mush.  I recently discovered Scottish steel-cut oats which makes a very creamy oatmeal, with little grains of oats with a bite.  Good stuff--mush.

Now I like to experiment with combinations of different kinds of grains to make a mush with a little different character.  I’ll use cracked wheat, oatmeal, cornmeal or even rice to make something new.  There are endless possible variations of mush.

Then there is polenta.  Originating in Italy, polenta may be served as a hot porridge, or it may be allowed to cool and solidify into a loaf that can be baked, fried, or grilled.  Now usually made with cornmeal, polenta can also be made from farro, chestnut flour, millet, spelt and chickpeas.  Now I enjoy slicing up my congealed mush and frying them up into little patties.  I want to go further into this polenta thing, but it’s fundamentally all mush.

Arctic dog sled teams are urged on with the sharp cry of “Mush.”  Do you suppose the prospect of getting a bowl of mush at the end of the trip is what motivates the dogs to run so enthusiastically?

Mush!