Daily Archives: December 4, 2010

Saturday mornings are not among my favourite things. I mean, for starters, I work and therefore have to miss out on all those awesome Saturday morning cartoons. And I start at 8 am. I realize that’s not actually early for a work day, but seriously, what kid wants to have a piano lesson at 8 am on a Saturday?? Don’t they have cartoons to watch?? Anyhoo, and then the early start means that I have to always have an early night on Friday. Nevermind that it’s currently 11:30 pm and here I am blogging instead of sleeping.

But my real issue with Saturday mornings is the many hours, too many hours, I have to endure between breakfast and lunch. I am a person who absolutely needs to have her meals in a timely manner, or else my stomach rages war on me. It’s not pretty when that happens. And I have no time for a snack either; I can’t eat and talk at the same time, despite me being Chinese. And I’ve tried having a smoothie cuz I can sometimes manage to drink something in between talking, but then sometimes even that is cumbersome. Like the time my student asked me if I was drinking something with peach in it (and yes, it was a smoothie with peaches in it), and spent the rest of the lesson interjecting random facts about peaches and telling me I was making him hungry. Hey, I’m with you kid, when’s lunch?–was all I could think to say. Plus I was always worried I might get a seed or spinach leaf stuck in my teeth.

So I stopped the whole smoothie thing. But I was huuuungry by the time lunch finally rolled around. When I get to that point, I am always reminded of the time I was watching a Chinese movie with exceptionally bad subtitles and when the character said in Chinese that he was starving, the subtitle simply said “I want to eat a horse”. Whoops, something got cross-wired in translation. But seriously, during that last hour before lunch, I want to eat a horse, my hair, my sock (hey, cotton’s edible, init?)…

Enter (drumroll please) the Super-Power-Quinoa-Breakfast!

This stuff keeps me full for hours. And although I’m still hungry by lunchtime, my stomach rage is no longer out of control, but rather, a polite and only somewhat insistent plead for food. Quinoa is full of protein (it is the grain with the highest protein content) and fibre and other goodies, and that’s what keeps me full, much more than oatmeal. So I always make myself a batch on Friday, and on Saturday mornings I just heat it up in the microwave with a couple splashes of milk, top with my fave toppings, and away I go.

Quinoa Porridge

• 1/2 C quinoa
• 1 C milk
• 1 C water

Put all 3 ingredients in a pot and heat to boil. Do not walk away from the stove! I learned the hard way that this stuff goes super fast from not boiling to bubbling over. And trust me, it’s really not fun to clean up tiny little quinoa granules and milk from beneath the element. Once boiling, turn heat down to medium-low and cook for 15-20 mins, stirring occasionally. It is done when the quinoa has absorbed most of the liquid.

I top mine with a handful of nuts, craisins, banana, unsweetened coconut shreds, and my latest obsession, chia seeds!

You can put in whatever you like, of course, and nut butters and cinnamon are also among my usual toppings. It’s so yummy…creamy and hearty, and really warms me up on a cold winter’s morning before the sun’s up.

Mmm, the thought of tomorrow morning’s breakfast almost — almost — makes me look forward to my alarm clock ring.