Have you ever had one of those days when little irritations piled up until you wanted to scream? To paraphrase British humorist Ashley Brilliant: “It’s not that it’s one things after another, it’s when everything gangs up on you all at once.

”Monday was like that. My old, old computer, the one I have been writing this column on for many years, decided that it could no longer access the startup drive. Now I’ve misplaced many things in my life and sometimes my “startup” seems inaccessible, but I never expected that to rub off onto my computer. It actually gave me the error message on Sunday night but I figured a good night’s sleep might help.

So, first thing in the morning, fortified by porridge and strong coffee, I searched the internet for a solution. It turns out the YouTube videos about the problem are only meant for much
newer computers. So that was the bad news. The good news is that my old computer was a gift, a castoff from my tech savy brother, so I really hadn’t lost much except a machine that is like a friend… sob.
I thought about using my iPad to write this column, but discovered that it did not have a word processing program. No problem.
Apple store has EVERYTHING. Except a Pages application for my very old iPad. Bad news, but good news because the iPad was a gift from CNIB so I won’t look it in the mouth.

So it was time to sleep on it again.
After a good lunch and a nap, I thought about trying to use my mother’s old computer that I have only been using for games. Good news… she had Word on her computer, bad news, I couldn’t make it talk to the Internet even though I somehow had her password.
More bad news, my hearing aid was making strange noises that are even more distracting than my usual tinnitus. Good news, it’s still under warranty. Even better, my audiologist is local… Prince Albert Hearing Services at Victoria Square. A phone call got me an appointment for the next day.
After a coffee break, I remembered that I had a memory stick, another gift from my brother. I was able to load this column onto the stick, my daughter will plug it into her
computer and email it to my editor. Only slightly more cumbersome than Canada Post.
After fighting with computers all day, I needed a break. A half hour walk in the sunshine convinced me that life isn’t all bad.

Having struggled with an unfamiliar word processing program and a tiny screen, I
decided to call my computer guy, Marcus, at Computer Castle. In under an hour he came up with four excellent options that would make my life so much better. I ordered a new blue M4 and expect to be using it before you read this column.
Perhaps the moral of this story is “shop local.”

When we comment on something new and good, especially an innovation likely to improve people’s lives, we might say, “It’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.” But what was the greatest thing before sliced bread? It might have been wrapped bread.

Wikipedia suggests Otto Frederick Rohwedder of Davenport, Iowa, invented the first single loaf bread-slicing machine. It was first used by the Chillicothe Baking Company of Chillicothe, Missouri, which sold their first slices on July 7, 1928. The pre-sliced bread was advertised as “the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped.”

Slicing a loaf of bread is a skill easily mastered in the home and a sliced loaf dries out more quickly. So why was sliced bread a success? Wikipedia suggests commercially sliced bread resulted in uniform and somewhat thinner slices and people ate more slices of bread at a time. They also ate bread more frequently, because of the ease of getting and eating another piece of bread.

The History Channel says factory-produced loaves were designed to be softer than those prepared at home or at small, local bakeries because the bread-buying public had come to equate “squeezable softness” with freshness, according to “White Bread” by Aaron Bobrow-Strain. The softer loaves had become almost impossible to slice neatly at home.

One of the first major brands to distribute sliced bread was Wonder. Wonder Bread originally appeared in stores in 1921 in Indianapolis.

During  the Second World War,  U.S. officials imposed a short-lived ban on sliced bread as a conservation measure. According to The New York Times, officials explained that “the ready-sliced loaf must have a heavier wrapping than an unsliced one if it is not to dry out.” It was also intended to counteract a rise in the price of bread, caused by the Office of Price Administration’s authorization of a ten percent increase in flour prices.

The outcry from the American public was immediate and loud. The ban on sliced bread was lifted after only a few weeks.

Evidently, consumers thought sliced bread was the best thing ever.

“More gruel please,” whispers young Oliver Twist in Charles Dickens’s famous novel about the British work house.

Gruel gets a bad rap as subsistence food fed to prisoners but in fact this thin porridge has been a mainstay for humanity since the Stone Age.

According to Wikipedia, gruel is a food consisting of some type of grain … such as ground oats, wheat, rye or rice … cooked in water or milk. It is a thinner version of porridge.   Historically, gruel has been a staple of the Western diet, especially for peasants. Gruel has been associated with feeding the sick or recently-weaned children.

Gruel predates the earliest civilization, emerging in the hunter gatherer societies as a meal of gathered grains soaked in water. Soaking made the food easier to chew and more digestible. Cooking sanitized the mixture. Gruel was also a medium for growing yeast for fermentation, the first step for making both bread and beer.

Rice gruel called congee remains a staple food for millions of people around the world. Sometimes it is made with chicken stock and probably tastes like my favourite chicken soup with rice.

Gruel can be very satisfying and nutritious. Warm rice pudding with thick cream is the food of the gods.

My favourite grain is oats, either steel-cut or rolled oats will do for a wonderful breakfast of porridge sweetened with brown sugar, drowned in milk. Perhaps my love for porridge is partly due to my Scottish grandmother. Since medieval times oats have been grown in Scotland as the staple diet of the crofters. It is hard to imagine Scotland without oats.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, many countries imposed sanctions on Russia. A Youtuber  showed the empty grocery shelves in Moscow. Particularly absent was kasha, also known as buckwheat. While oatmeal porridge brings me the comfort of my childhood each morning, kasha is the comforting breakfast food for many Slavic people. Intrigued, I bought a bag of cracked buckwheat at the Co-op grocery store and followed the directions on the package. It told me to toast the groats in a hot pan and then slowly stir them into boiling salted water. Much like cooking rice, the cooking pot is covered tightly and simmered without stirring for 15 minutes. Like Scottish oatmeal porridge, kasha can be eaten simply with butter, salt and pepper or sweetened to taste.

Toasting the buckwheat took only a minute or two and created a rich nutty taste. I can fully understand why Muscovites panicked and cleared the shelves of this staple grain.

Corn has sustained North and South Americans for millennia. Corn comes from a wild grain called teosinte which is still growing in Mexico today. The earliest corn plant was very small but after years of breeding and selection corn has been changed into what we know today. Dry corn can be ground into meal that is cooked into a type of porridge or mush. Soaking cornmeal creates a beverage called atole.

Gruel in its many forms around the world is inexpensive, nourishing and takes like home.