Dinner with Julie

Breakfast Quinoa

I’m going to leave you with a little breakfast idea, as it’s Sunday night and I’m setting in for a long night of finishing assignments that are due Monday morning (flashback to high school! I see a pattern here!) and I’ve got so much to catch you up on I don’t even know where to begin. And I still haven’t finished telling you about New York. Hell, I’m pretty sure I still need to fill you in on our summer trip to Tofino that was back in July.

I was invited to be part of a dinner club tonight – friends of a friend have been meeting monthly to share dinner together for 8 years. 8! Years! It was incredibly cool to be a part of, and the menu was amazing – the theme was celebrity chefs, and everyone chose a dish from one of their favourites. I didn’t bring my camera, thinking as I was leaving that -besides the risk of dropping it whilst carrying a bottle of wine and my Le Creuset full of boeuf bourguignon for five blocks- it might be rude to show up for dinner at the home of people I’ve never met with camera in hand to document it. I wound up regretting it, of course, and taking a bunch of sub-par photos on my blackberry. I will tell you all about it, but don’t want to be stingy and rushed because I need to still get some coherent words out that will actually be published in the newspaper and for which they are paying me actual cash money, and I like to try to not hand in crap.

Instead, I’ll jump the gun and share what I’ll be having for breakfast tomorrow, because it’s almost officially morning now anyway, and I do think that oats shouldn’t have a monopoly on the warm breakfast cereal market. Quinoa takes slightly longer to cook, but has the benefit of added protein and is higher in fibre. Cooking it in milk makes it extra creamy, almost like rice pudding. It’s great to cook a big batch of to dip into and reheat for a few days.

Breakfast Quinoa

1 cup quinoa
2 cups milk, plus more for serving
2 Tbsp. brown sugar or maple syrup
1/4-1/2 cup raisins or other dried fruit or berries
1 cinnamon stick

Rinse quinoa well in a sieve and put it in a medium saucepan with the milk. Set over medium heat and bring to a simmer. Turn the heat down to low and cook, stirring often, until most of the milk has been absorbed.

Stir in the sugar, and add the dried fruit and cinnamon stick. Cook until the rest of the milk has been absorbed, the quinoa is soft and the mixture is thick. Serve warm.

November 28 2010 | breakfast | 7 Comments »