Quinoa

Will is back in school and good Lord the 6:45 a.m. wake up call is something else. 

It’s funny how easy it is to get out of practice.  Seriously, when the alarm jolted me awake this morning I felt like I had been run over by a cement truck.  Like the truck ran me over and then backed up and ran me over again for good measure.

And one would think I’d be used to early mornings after twenty-four years of small children and then larger ones and school mornings of preparing hot breakfast and lunches, the drive to school, but I’m not.  It’s always hard getting back on school schedule and this time seems to be even harder. 

Maybe because I stayed up later this holiday than I normally do to hang out with the children, who seem to go to bed late and rise even later.

I made Quinoa for breakfast.  And for those of you who are unfamiliar with the grain, I’ve plucked this description from an article written by Karen Railey.

Quinoa (pronounced Keen-wah) is an ancient food that is not yet well known in North America. It has been cultivated in South American Andes since at least 3,000 B.C. and has been a staple food of millions of native inhabitants. The ancient Incas called quinoa the “mother grain” and revered it as sacred. Each year at planting time it was traditional for the Inca leader to plant the first quinoa seed using a solid gold shovel! Quinoa was used to sustain Incan armies, which frequently marched for many days eating a mixture of quinoa and fat, known as “war balls.“ Beginning with the Spanish conquest in the 1500s, there was a 400-year decline in the production of quinoa. It became a minor crop at that time and was grown only by peasants in remote areas for local consumption.

Now some of you might have had a little splodge of it served up with your fish at a fancy restaurant, cooked perhaps with a little onion and chopped tomato and perhaps a sprinkle of parsley or basil.  That generally the way I’ve seen it.  They serve it at spas and things and I would eat it because I knew it was good for me, not because my taste buds wanted it.  So, that being said, it might seem like an odd sort of breakfast choice for me to make for my family this morning.  Or any morning for that matter.

BUT… when I went on that hiking holiday (that I blogged about in July) with my friend, Dawna, that I thought was going to be a living hell and then I ended up loving it and losing 4 lbs to boot…

They fed us Quinoa one day for breakfast.  I poked at it unenthusiastically with my spoon for a few moments and then I reminded myself that I had a whole day of hiking ahead of me and I’d better eat up because the stuff is incredibly high in protein, and guess what?  It tasted good!

I’m not sure what the cook had put in it, but she used it as the basis of a breakfast cereal rather than a riceish side dish for dinner.  I could taste banana and cinnamon and she’d sprinkled fresh berries on the top.  “Hmm…“ I thought to myself.  “I could do this.“

Anyway, here’s how I made it today, but really, with this kind of thing, anything goes, just throw in what sounds good to your tongue.  And if you look it up on the Internet and then read some of it’s history to your children (or reluctant husband/wife/partner) and show them the ancient pyramids and stuff like that it might encourage them to give it a go. 

Quinoa is really, really good for you and if you make it like this, it actually tastes good too.

Quinoa (as a cereal)
Ingredients: Quinoa, a banana, dried cranberries, raisins, almonds, either fresh or frozen blueberries or raspberries or both, maple syrup, cinnamon, honey, vanilla

-place in a pot and bring to a boil 1 cup of Quinoa and 2 cups of water, then turn the heat down to simmer.  Stirring now and then.

-chop one banana into small pieces and add to pot.

-add a sprinkle of salt and some cinnamon (I do around 6 long shakes and I have a big cinnemon shaker, so figure it’s somewhere between 1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons)

-add a glug of maple syrup and around a five second squirt of honey (maybe 1-2 tablespoons of maple, same of honey) and a tiny splash of vanilla to the pot.

-place a handful of whole raw almonds in the oven on a cookie sheet at 400 degrees for five minutes, take them out and chop on chopping board.

-chop a fistful of dried cranberries, chop a fistful of raisins.

When the water has been absorbed into the Quinoa, taste to make sure the texture is good.  The Quinoa should have opened up a little and should not be crunchy, but have a nice texture and a bit of a spring to them.  If you look real closely it’s like there they become a little more opaque and have a little “c” along the outside. 

-If it is winter, throw in around two fistfuls of whatever frozen summer berry you have in your fridge.  Once they are warm, serve.

-drizzle a little honey over the top.  Sprinkle on some of the chopped dried cranberries, raisins and toasted almonds.  (If it is summer, this would be when you put the fresh berries on top.)  And then…

EAT! 

I like mine with a drizzle of whole milk.  Don likes his plain.

I hope you like it, and if you don’t?  Well, isn’t it cool to think about all of those centuries of people before us eating this very same grain?  Not only that, think about how healthy it is!  Someone once told me that one serving of Quinoa had (as much?  more?) protein than a steak!

Posted by Meg Tilly on Wednesday, January 14, 2009 in Recipes