Friday’s post about Weetabix reminded me of something that happened last week.

After indulging a little too much of late, John was having a week without sugar and he had to find alternative to his usual added-sugar fruit and fibre breakfast cereal. He hadn’t planned it too well and we didn’t have much in, so he decided to have porridge from some oats we’d had in the cupboard for a while.

I came downstairs to find him like a little kid, going “urrrrgh” with the half-chewed oats on his sticking-out tongue – they’d taken on that extra special “cupboard smell”, the one which smells stale and a tiny bit like the other hundred things we keep in that cupboard, from ginger and porchini mushrooms, to liquorish and dried chillis.

Now unlike my unsureness with Weetabix, I know that rolled oats can definitely be made into a facial scrub – but what else can be done with them? I think the “cupboard smell” is going to get in the way of culinary uses but I suspect there is still options for them yet…