Quinoa Breakfast Bowl

For our final dish, we're going to marry our Greek yogurt with quinoa. Quinoa is a gluten free alternative to many starchy grains like rice or oats, and it's actually more of a seed than it is a grain. It has a little kind of seed like center and then a husk around it. And when you eat it, it almost kind of pops in your mouth a little bit, so it's different than rice. It's a little bit of getting used to when you haven't had it before, but the good news is is you can flavor it in many different ways, either sweet or savory. So this is cooked with some plant based milk, cinnamon, vanilla, and a tiny little bit of honey, and then you can see that the texture is really fluffy.

It's gonna get less fluffy as we add in that yogurt, but if you wanted to have this on its own or make it similar to how you might make oatmeal, it's a wonderful option for breakfast. It carries about 4 grams of protein per serving, so it's considered higher in protein than many starchy grains and it's just a really fun seed starch alternative to work with, especially for those of you that are gluten free.

So let's do all really we need to do which is add in our Greek yogurt. Now when I cook to the quinoa it's generally a 1 to 2 ratio, so 1 cup of quinoa to 2 cups of liquid and depending on how quickly your stove heats up or your burner goes, I often add just a little bit more liquid to make sure that it absorbs all of it. You bring everything together into a rolling boil and then you turn it down to simmer until the liquid dissipates. And then there'll be some liquid left over in your pot, but then once you're complete with that, then you can just let the quinoa sit for a moment and absorb the rest of the liquid. We'll be working with some savory recipes in another video that I love. But as you can see, as we mix in the Greek yogurt, it looks very similar to something like overnight oats or oatmeal. And it's just again a more robust source of protein and energy without the sugar component involved in. So here's our base and let's build a bowl.

For this bowl, we'll do a take on pb and j. Only in this take, the p stands for peanuts, the b stands for banana, and the s stands for strawberries. So, all we need to do is get a little base down again between 2 thirds and 3 quarters of a cup, depending more if you like. We've got our banana. Now, I saw a monkey eat a banana by slicing off the end like so and then peeling it and it looked just genius. Why aren't we all doing it like this? Because you have a stem at the bottom. So, that's what I'm doing. I pay attention to the animals and follow. We're gonna make some nice thin slices of banana. Uh-oh. Run away. That'll do. And then, amateur tip, if you want your peanut butter to drizzle, you wanna make sure you heat it up for a few moments either in the microwave or just in a bowl of water on the stove.

So, let's go ahead and make something amazing happen with the bananas. We're gonna take them and just make a circle around the top. I really do believe in playing with your food. I think it brings that level of pleasure that we might not be able to enjoy otherwise.

So we've got our bananas around the top. We're gonna go ahead and make a little tower of strawberries in the middle. Also, for those of you who have children, I know people can go overboard on the internet with how much they design their food but a little goes a long way. I find that if I put a tiny bit of effort into my son's meal in making them look interesting then he's more excited to pursue.

Alright. So we've got a little strawberry and banana and we're gonna take our pre warmed peanut butter and swirl it around. We're just gonna pretend that's like caramel. It's gonna be so good. Swirl it around there. And then finally, once again, I'm always gonna add just a little bit of honey. There are benefits to honey. It's sweet enough that you don't have to have a ton of it. And it just gives that little touch of sweetness that it brings out the flavor in most of our fruits and the grains in this dish. And if we really want to, we can once again just give a little drizzle or a sprinkle rather on top, and then we have a beautiful bowl. Let's try it. Let's get a good amount of everything in there.

It reminds me of one of those oatmeal bowls that you might get, like, somewhere with snow capped mountains that just feels it's comfort food, honestly. I think the peanut butter and the honey help a ton, but we've got tons of protein in there. We've got vitamins from the strawberry. We've got the potassium from the bananas. We're winning both in our nutrition category and also in our flavor category, and that's the most important that's the most important one. So it's always really great to have options and flavors to play with, and I hope that you learned something today and got inspired to be creative with your own concoctions and your own mixtures. We can create wonderful relationships with food as long as we approach it with a little bit of curiosity, little bit of willingness, and sometimes when you're trying something new, a little bit of courage. So thank you for being here today. Go and create, and I hope you have some yummy futures that are Greek yogurt inspired as you move forward. Remember, you are strong, resilient, and the small moments matter. I'll see you next time.