Brunch

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2014/oct/23/how-to-make-perfect-bircher-muesli-recipeWhen I first encountered bircher muesli on the bountiful breakfast table at Ireland?s Ballymaloe House I assumed they?d invented it, so perfect was the combination of Irish oatmeal, homegrown apples and thick yellow cream. In fact, as I quickly discovered when I tried to recreate this mushy beige manna at home, bircher muesli?s origins lie a long way from the green fields of County Cork.It is the creation of Maximilian Bircher-Benner, a Swiss doctor and nutritionist, who developed it for patients at his Zurich sanatorium at the turn of the last century as a way of shoehorning yet more raw fruit into their diets. His charges started every single meal with a bowl of his ?little mush? ? which may, I concede, have been rather too much of a good thing.Bircher-Benner believed apples had cured him of jaundice as a young man, leaving him unfashionably evangelical, for his time, on the powers of fruit and vegetables. I can see his creation would be excellent fuel for a day yomping in the Swiss countryside (or indeed soaking up the sun in one?s underwear, as seems to have been popular in such establishments). It is also a sound choice for anyone, yomper or not, hoping to see off the mid-morning munchies. Fresher and fruitier than the more familiar dry variety, bircher muesli is the perfect way to start the day, especially now, at the height of the apple season.