My go-to breakfast is a pastured egg over greens with a slice of sprouted grain toast.
But the winter chill came to call in the Shire this week, which got me hankering for a warm bowl of what my husband loving refers to as gruel. What’s a low-grain gal to do? Quinoa to the rescue – it’s actually a seed, has a great nutrition profile and cooks up quickly compared to most grains. I tried an experiment with some lacinato kale that was waiting so patiently for me to eat it this week, turning yellow stalk by stalk. At first I wondered if I’d made a green mess of a mistake, but you can see it’s lovely. It was delicious in this naturally sweet (from apples and spices) breakfast of Apple walnut quinoa with kale.
Ingredients
2/3 cup water
1/3 cup quinoa, rinsed in cold water
1 small apple, cubed
2 leaves lacinato (dinosaur) kale, sliced
1/4 cup walnuts
2 pods cardamom seeds, peeled (eat the spice, not the husk!)
dash of cinnamon, nutmeg and black pepper
Directions
Bring water to a boil in small saucepan. Add rinsed quinoa, lower to medium heat and cook for 10 minutes or until seeds get larger and soft. Add remaining ingredients and cook about 5 minutes more, until quinoa seeds pop open and you can see the little light curl emerge from them. If you so choose, top with grass-fed yogurt.
Here are a couple other cold weather recipes…
Fire cider
Garlicky leek soup
Spicy corn & black bean soup
Stay warm!
