Quinoa for Breakfast

I've been trying different ways to make breakfast a little more interesting over the last two weeks since I haven't been eating eggs, bagels or English muffins. I found a recipe in Kris Carr's new cookbook, Crazy Sexy Kitchen, for quinoa cooked with almond milk, coconut milk, agave, vanilla, mangos, and/or peaches. It was pretty good but I also found that I didn't even need that many ingredients to make it a decent breakfast dish.

Whenever I have a few minutes (because really that's all it takes) I'll make a batch of quinoa and just keep it in the fridge. I also like to do this because I prefer to keep things easy in the morning. So this morning when I made this, I took the pre-made quinoa and put it in a small pot, combining it with coconut milk. Next I added some frozen mango chunks, covered the pot and let it simmer on a medium heat until it was hot--about ten minutes. Finally, I put it in a bowl and added cinnamon to taste. Breakfast is served!

I love using quinoa as a base grain for a lot of dishes. Although it is not my all-time favorite grain, its health benefits make it worth including in your diet and with the right mixture of ingredients it can taste great! Quinoa is rich in protein, fiber, iron, and magnesium, among other things. Also in this dish, mango is full of vitamin C, coconut milk has a decent calcium content, and cinnamon is anti-inflammatory. It's a healthy mix of food!

(Note: In this dish, I didn't really measure anything. I just added what I thought looked good and there you have it! Play around with the ingredients to find what you like.)