Miso is a wonderful paste of fermented soybeans that is often mixed with a variety of fermented grains to form a wide range of miso types. So choose your favourite from sweet, delicate white miso all the way to richly intense dark miso and spoon in some of last night’s rice to get your digestive day off to a great start. It’s said that the Japanese diet, abundant with soy superfoods like miso, was a factor in the amazing recovery made by many victims of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings that ended WWII. I know that when visiting nutritionally poor parts of the world it’s a good idea to take along a supply of miso to increase the nutritional benefits of your meals. Serves one

Porridge or oat gruel is a meal that reaches so far back in time that it has its stains on some of humankind’s earliest breakfast tables. It makes a satisfying yin type of meal that fills the belly, its texture engendering a deep comfort response from its recipients. The Scottish highlanders often added a finger of single malt whisky on particularly cold mornings.

“There is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour.” - Ecclesiastes 2:24