Breakfast Of Champions

This morning I made a quinoa porridge for breakfast that was really, really good. The secret is to boil the quinoa in 1/2 milk and 1/2 water- it gives the cereal a nice creamy body while still maintaining its light, fluffy, quintessential quinoaness. I enjoyed mine with a plate of steamed kale and a cup of coffee- yum! In honor of my delicious breakfast this morning, I'm adding a new goal (#27), which is to eat quinoa at least twice a week. As I mentioned in a previous blog post, quinoa is  highly nutritious and versatile, and I'm excited to incorporate more of it into my diet. The recipe below makes 3 good-sized servings, so you can either scale it back if you are just cooking for yourself, or portion it out for eating cold on subsequent mornings like I did. I found the recipe on 101cookbooks.com, and it is pretty much perfect as written. I've just made a couple of modifications to allow for substitutions and to provide slightly larger serving sizes:

Warm and Nutty Cinnamon Quinoa 

1 cup milk
 (I used almond milk, but any kind of milk should work just fine)

1 cup water


1 cup quinoa


2 cups fresh berries


1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon


1/3 cup chopped pecans or walnuts, toasted*


3 teaspoons agave or honey

Combine milk, water and quinoa in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat to medium-low; cover and simmer 15 minutes or until most of the liquid is absorbed. Turn off heat; let stand covered 5 minutes. Stir in berries and cinnamon; transfer to three bowls and top with pecans. Drizzle 1 teaspoon agave nectar over each serving.

Serves 3.

*While the quinoa cooks, roast the pecans in a 350F degree toaster oven for 5 to 6 minutes or in a dry skillet over medium heat for about 3 minutes.