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Breakfast is said to be is the most important meal of the day. Having said that, let’s do a quick self evaluation…what is the nutritional value of the items on your breakfast plate? How of it would make you go straight to the doctor’s if you think too much about it? It is the 3 fried eggs, the yummy perfectly browned bacon or that slice of chocolate fudge cake??

We are told, “you are what you eat,” at times I wonder what that really means, but let’s flow with for now and make a slight change to our breakfast routine by introducing porridge (Uji) as our breakfast option at least once a week.

Uji/Porridge is an authentic Kenyan dish. There are many variations of it depending on whom you are talking to and their cultural background. The diversity of the Kenyan culture plays a big role on the food choices in our homes.

In our case, let’s go with uji wa wimbi -usuu (Wimbi Porridge). This is made using millet flour. Millet flour is made from grinding millet grains. It is gluten free and is of high nutritionally value.

Uji is easy to make and takes just about 10 – 15 minutes to prepare, cook and serve. So you really do not have a good excuse not to prepare some at least once a week as it is not time consuming.

Ingredients
1 cup of unga ya wimbi (Millet)
5 cups of water
Cold milk
Sugar (optional)
½ lemon (optional)
Directions
1. Put 4 cups of water in a sufuria and place it on the fire.

2. Take the 1 cup of wimbi flour and mix it with a cup of cold water in a cup, stir ir to a smooth paste.

3. Bring the water in the sufuria to a boil, then pour in the flour paste.

4. Stir non-stop until it becomes thick and starts to boil.

5. Lower the heat and allow to cook for at least 7 minutes, then serve.

Should you want to add milk, pour it in the last minutes before serving. It is also optional to use lemons which you can squeeze in as it cooks or once you have served the Uji.

To cool the porridge especially for children, you can choose to add cold milk once you have served the porridge. Sugar too is optional.

As i mentioned earlier, there are variations to the flour you can use to make your porridge. You can use white maize flour, sorghum flour or a blend of all these flours.

Try prepare uji wa wimbi and share your experience with us, as a comment on our blog, post of our FaceBook page or tag us on our twitter handle.