Healthy Breakfast Quinoa

Coconut flavored Breakfast Quinoa (kid tested)

Serves 4
Hands-on time: 10 minute
Total time: 22 Min
Recipe found in Cooking Light (June 2013)

Breakfast Quinoa...beyond good.

I've been terrible with posting recipes. Sorry. Yes, I'm still cooking and have found some AMAZING QUICK, HEALTHY dishes out there. I have a HUGE bin full to prove it. All the recipes sit in there. My goal this weekend is to clean it out and keep the ones I know we all loved, that were under 20 minutes and put them in a binder - 7 recipes per week. Then I plan to create a grocery list and plan out about 2-3 months of recipes and then recycle through. I won't have to plan as much. I won't have to write lists as much. It'll all be THERE and done. And I know we'll be eating healthy, which is very important to me. It's just finding the time to do it. I know I will though.

Anyway, I made this breakfast last Friday morning. For one, our kitchen smelled ridiculously good. For two, this tasted SO SO SO good. For three, Karl AND Jackson absolutely LOVED. LOVED.

I doubled the recipe (BTW). The recipe typed below just didn't seem like enough. Glad I doubled it.

1/2 cup uncooked quinoa
3/4 cup light coconut milk

2 tablespoons water 

1 tablespoon light brown sugar

1/8 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup flaked unsweetened coconut

1 cup sliced strawberries

1 cup sliced banana

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 400°.
2. Place quinoa in a fine sieve, and place the sieve in a large bowl. Cover quinoa with water. Using your hands, rub the grains together for 30 seconds; rinse and drain quinoa. Repeat the procedure twice. Drain well. Combine quinoa, coconut milk, 2 tablespoons water, brown sugar, and salt in a medium saucepan, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, and simmer 15 minutes or until liquid is absorbed, stirring occasionally. Stir mixture constantly during the last 2 minutes of cooking.
3. While quinoa cooks, spread flaked coconut in a single layer on a baking sheet. Bake at 400° for 5 minutes or until golden brown. Cool slightly.
4. Place about 1/2 cup quinoa mixture in each of 4 bowls. Top each serving with 1/4 cup strawberry slices, 1/4 cup banana slices, and 1 tablespoon toasted coconut. Serve warm.

Karl's reaction: "Babe, you can make this again and again whenever you want."

Jackson's reaction: "ohhhh!"  *mows down*

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Munchkin Meals

I follow several blogs, but one of my favorites is from a first-time mom who is an inspirational health and fitness nut. Every once in a while she posts Munchkin Meals. I love this. She basically highlights what her toddler eats in a typical day. I thought I’d borrow her idea and highlight what I feed Jackson (now 1 year old) during specific mealtimes. I’m going to start with breakfast.

Enjoying breakfast

 

I’m doing this because I am ALWAYS looking for good healthy food ideas for Jackson. I’m trying to introduce more and more protein into Jackson’s diet because he is so skinny so I’ve been doing research and trying to stick to healthy grains and more natural foods, that also taste really great.

BREAKFAST

To me, eggs are a great source of protein but we haven’t yet incorporated them into Jackson’s diet. Now that he’s a year old, I WILL be making these Mini Quinoa Egg BLT BITES this weekend. http://iowagirleats.com/2012/10/16/mini-blt-quinoa-cups/

BLT Quinoa Cups

 

Otherwise Jackson will get one of these dishes for breakfast regularly:

1.       Spiced Breakfast Quinoa  - http://www.eatingwell.com/recipes/breakfast_quinoa.html

Spiced Quinoa

 

2.       Whole wheat oatmeal pancakes with blueberries - http://christiekoester.blogspot.com/2011/06/oatmeal-buttermilk-cinnamon-pancakes.html

Blueberry Whole Wheat Oatmeal Pancakes

 

3.       Overnight steel cut oats with a fruit cooked in - http://christiekoester.blogspot.com/2012/10/pumpkin-steel-cut-overnight-oats.html

Overnight Steel Cut Pumpkin Oats

 

4.       Two cubes of frozen pureed fruit, heated and then mixed together with ground oatmeal. I stir in Yo-Baby Whole Milk yogurt.

Oats

 

5.       Cottage cheese and a fruit chopped up and cheerios

 

All of these are served with a cup of breast milk, but we’ll soon be moving over to organic whole cow’s milk.

What do you serve your toddler for breakfast?

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Is Making My Own Baby Food Really that Hard? - Month 5

Trying New HEALTHY Baby Foods

 

Jackson has now been eating solids for a full month. I was a little nervous about him eating solids at four months just because all these studies show that if you start babies on solids too soon, they have a higher chance of getting food allergies. Are these studies accurate? I don’t know. One day we’re supposed to be drinking coffee. The next we’re not. We can eat egg yolk. Then we can’t.

So what is it???

But Jackson was definitely ready, and I knew it. He was giving us all the signs, especially going from sleeping 5-7 hours a night to 2-3 hour spurts a night and needing mom's milk a LOT. He was guzzling 5.5 ounces three times a day at day care too and cried for more. He was growing and moving tons and burning through all that milk and our pediatrician saw that first hand.  

Yep, holding his own spoon!!!

 

First thing we offered Jackson was organic whole grain rice cereal mixed with my breast milk. He did NOT want anything to do with it the first feeding. Made me sad just because he was looking at me like what are you doing??? Help me! But we were also battling his evening meltdown. So we learned that we had to feed him around 5:30/6:00, any later and we were in trouble.

Day two, things weren’t that much better. More crying. And more looking at me like…NO! I want you, mom!!!

Finally day three, he seemed a little interested. Took a couple spoonfuls and thought about it. Then was done.

Day four, he was grabbing the spoon himself and wanting to feed himself and making “mmmm” sounds. So CUTE!

After each meal, I nurse Jackson too. Right now he'll maybe eat 3-10 minutes per side after eating solids. There are times he arches his back and screams though. But I have noticed he's very efficient at eating now. I also nurse him right before he goes to bed an hour or two later. It's a short feeding. Sunday night he FINALLY slept through the ENTIRE night. YESSSSSSSSS.

I wouldn’t say eating all of a sudden became easy after he accepted the food because it’s a messy process. Jackson loves sticking his hands in his mouth while he has just taken in a bunch of cereal. He loves grabbing for the spoon. The food runs down his chin, down into his neck, onto his clothes. Sometimes he’ll sneeze or cough and it goes into mom’s eye. All that fun stuff.

Healthy, yummy goodness

 

What we needed was a good bib. And thanks to Karl’s cousin (who has three boys), she gave us a few bibs after Jackson was born and said they were a must. She had to search all over for them but found them at K-Mart! She was right. Nothing compares to these bibs. The brand: Dex Baby.

Best bibs ever!

 

After two solid weeks of the rice cereal mixed with my breast milk, we moved on to homemade avocados also mixed with my breast milk. He liked those a lot and didn’t make any disgusted faces at all.

I let him enjoy for a week and then moved on to organic whole grain oatmeal. He made some faces with this. Three days of oatmeal and we’ve moved on to homemade sweet potatoes.

OK...but the honest problem is: I have been flying through my breast milk when mixing with the cereal and a lot of times he doesn’t eat it all. So I have toss. What!??!? Toss my hard pumped liquid gold breast milk??? Such a waste. So I made the tough decision to mix in water and a little formula when it comes to the cereal. Does that mean I’m a bad mom? Does that mean I don’t “exclusively breastfeed”??? Who knows. Labels. Annoying. It's like I'm not part of the popular crowd anymore or something.  

Getting ready to freeze the sweet potatoes

 

Pretty simple to make all Jackson’s fruits and veggies though. I simply heated the sweet potatoes up in the microwave and scooped out all the goodness and pureed it. Same with the avocados. Scooped out the insides and pureed (didn’t heat those up though)….sometimes still adding my breast milk to these to smooth it out.

Glad we registered for this awesome wedding gift. Putting it to use now!

 

Now Jackson opens his mouth as soon as I sit down in front of him. And he smiles and says, “Mmmmm.”

I’m going to have a lot of fun with this!!! Jackson gets to try all kinds of fruits and veggies and I'm hoping this will make him less of a picky eater in the future and give his immune system some “good army guys” to battle off all those bugs out there.

What's your baby's favorite dish?

 

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