Müsli

This morning's Bircher müsli brings back memories from my childhood.

I can remember the first time I went into an American grocery store. One of those giant ones. It was in Houston, Texas in the mid 1990’s and to say that I was bewildered is to put it mildly. I especially remember the cereal and shampoo sections, because to me they seemed so incredible excessive. Over the top Texas style. I mean, how many different shampoos can you possibly come up with? How many varieties of breakfast cereal?

In Sweden back then there were maybe five different breakfast cereals, and I only liked one: Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. I liked soggy corn flakes. I would deliberately leave my corn flakes in a bowl of milk until they had turned into a soggy mush.

Before my Houston grocery store experience, I’d never seen cereals with pieces of chocolate in them. Or candy. To me it seemed almost indecent. Candy for breakfast? At home when I grew up that would have been pretty much illegal. But here it was, out in the open, and rows upon rows of the stuff to boot.

After I had gone through every single American breakfast cereal, I found myself longing for the breakfasts of my childhood, which can be summed up in one word: Müsli. I could find no müsli in Houston, not even when I looked for it under its Americanized heading “muesli”. Not back then. There was granola, of course. And it was good. It was crunchy. And there was a big selection of it: Naked granola, honey granola, very berry granola, tropical granola, protein granola… But I wanted müsli.

When I grew up there were two müsli brands I was addicted to. One was Doktor Ritter’s, which was quite expensive and had to be purchased in special health stores. This made it a rare player in our kitchen. The second one was cheaper and thus more frequent in our home, and it was called Eterna. I ate Doktor Ritter’s müsli or Eterna with milk in the morning for breakfast, and when I came home from school I would make myself another bowl while I pored over my Asterix comics.

So what’s the difference between granola and müsli?

Well, like granola, müsli is made with grains, fruit, and nuts. Unlike granola, however, müsli is not baked nor toasted and has no additional sugar. It’s raw. While Dr. James Caleb Jackson in Dansville, New York, developed granola in the late 19^th century, a Swiss physician named Maximilian Bircher-Benner, created müsli specifically for the patients in his hospital around the year 1900.

Yesterday I was just going to buy my favorite müsli here in the States, when I remembered a recipe for Bircher müsli that I hadn’t yet tried. It’s probably a bit modernized because it involves chia seeds, but it nevertheless turned out very tasty and müsli-like. The portion was rather huge; I had to share it with my son. This is how I made it:

Ingredients to overnight Bircher müsli

1 cup rolled oats (not instant and not steel cut)

2 Tablespoons chia seeds

11/4-cup milk (I used almond/coconut)

a dash of vanilla extract

dried fruit

I mixed all ingredients (except the fruit) in a small bowl, covered it and put it in the fridge overnight. In the morning before serving, I stirred and added a few prunes. A real Bircher müsli, I think would also include nuts, but I had none at hand. I think almonds and hazelnuts would be great.