A Recipe for Hot Cereal

1/5/14 Platinum Carbon ink, watercolor, water-soluble colored pencil,
Canson Montval 140 lb. paper

Our favorite hot cereal is Bob’s Red Mill Gluten-Free Mighty Tasty Hot Cereal. Since I don’t like most gluten-free products, and Greg can’t eat gluten, Mighty Tasty is one of the few cereals we both eat. This hearty, high-fiber, multi-grain cereal is especially good on cold winter mornings. We usually eat it with low-fat soy milk, but during the holiday season, we indulge by pouring lots of eggnog on it. Today we used up the last of the eggnog.

If you read my blog regularly, you know that I don’t ever fall back on using recipes as a “filler” for blog posts. Today is an exception because this sketch was made for this week’s Urban Sketchers Flickr group theme, “Recipes,” which I almost forgot about. I sketched the line work during the 10 minutes it took to cook the cereal (including stopping to stir several times), and I painted after breakfast. (The dark vertical line in the center of the pot is my reflection. Does this count as a self-portrait?) Here’s the recipe (serves two):

2 cups water

2/3 cup cereal

½ teaspoon salt

Boil water with salt. Pour in cereal, reduce heat to low, and cook for 10 minutes (stirring occasionally). Eat with raisins and eggnog. (By the way, using this recipe is about the extent of my cooking skills. That’s why you will never see another recipe published on my blog.)