Day 5 : 100 Days, 100 Salads – BREAKFAST SALAD #1

This is called Breakfast Salad #1, ’cause I have an idea for another breakfast salad with a poached egg that I’ll try next week.

Now for this one.  A couple of days ago I cooked up two batches of quinoa.  One with chicken broth and one with a cinnamon stick – obviously the cinnamon one is what I used for my breakfast salad this morning.

Making the cinnamon quinoa is pretty simple.  I used a mixture of regular quinoa with red and black quinoa – to give it a little color.

First, you rinse the quinoa.  You can buy quinoa that is pre-rinsed – but I get mine in the bulk area at Whole Foods, so I need to rinse mine.   After I rinse it I let it sit in the strainer for a few minutes to drip dry a bit.  Then the toasting.

I pour the damp quinoa in a sauce pan over a medium heat and stir occasionally to keep it from burning and sticking.  After the water evaporates the quinoa will start to toast.   It starts to pop like popcorn and smells a bit nutty.

After a few minutes of toasting I add the water.  (just like rice, the ratio is 2:1, 2 cups water for every 1 cup of quinoa).   For the cinnamon quinoa I add 1 cinnamon stick with the water.   I let the quinoa simmer for about 3-5 minutes and then cover for 10-15 minutes.

Once the quinoa was done, I place it in air tight containers in the refrigerator for later.

My cinnamon quinoa and some ricotta cheese were the base for this morning’s breakfast fruit salad.

I sweetened the ricotta with a little honey.

                                                             

I put my cinnamon quinoa and sweetened ricotta cheese in the bottom of my bowl  – and topped it with some blackberries, sliced strawberries and bananas and sprinkled with my homemade Groovy Granola.

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Breakfast Fruit Salad

1/2 cup cinnamon quinoa

1/4 cup sweetened ricotta (add 1 tsp honey)

1/2 banana, sliced

2 large strawberries, sliced

5-6 blackberries

1 tsp Groovy Granola

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Voila! Breakfast Salad!