Cheap & Healthy Breakfast

Tania was on her way over for breakfast and I wanted to make something other than oatmeal. I don’t have any boxed cereal – I’m too cheap to buy that stuff anymore. Lately for breakfasts I’ve been eating oatmeal or something left over from a previous meal the day before.

I hate looking in my refrigerator because no matter how much food I have, I always feel like there’s nothing to eat. It’s always a hodgepodge of random ingredients that were purchased for making a specific dish or leftovers of something I didn’t want to eat more than 3 times. There’s gotta be a better way to utilize food and prioritize produce usage so that waste is narrowed – or maybe even some day eliminated.

But time was slipping away and I needed to start cooking.

Leftover coconut rice!! Mmmm! “I can turn this into a hot breakfast cereal,” I thought.

Here’s the low down on delicious leftover coconut rice hot cereal:

P.S. This is probably the quickest, most filling, and most healthy breakfast I’ve ever eaten.

INGREDIENTS

-About 1 cup  leftover coconut brown rice

-About 1 cup  no sugar added Silk milk

-1/4 cup dried craisins

-1 1/2 TBS whole flaxseeds

METHODS

-Coconut Rice-

A friend gave me a coconut rice mix packet for my birthday, so this is what I used; however, when I usually make coconut rice, I just make rice in the rice cooker and add coconut milk at the end to taste. Feel free to use as much or as little coconut milk as you’d like (and remember that coconut milk is considered a saturated fat, so it’s best to go easy on it)

-Cereal-

Throw the coconut rice and soy milk in a pot and turn up to medium heat. If the rice is cold from the frige, just stir it around so that it’s not clumpy.

Add in the Craisins.

Take a few test tastes – if it’s not sweet enough for your taste, add some honey, agave, or maple syrup.

After Craisins have plumped up and the cereal is warmed all the way through, spoon the appropriate amount into a bowl.

To make this breakfast extra hearty I ground up some flax seeds in my coffee grinder and put them on top of the cereal.

(You can see the frost on the sides of the container because I keep them in the refrigerator)

It’s important to grind your flax because consuming them whole usually results in excreting them whole – thus, the nutrients aren’t absorbed.

*Be sure to stir the flax into the cereal before eating or you may take a big bite of, what tastes like, sawdust! But I promise, when it’s stirred in, you don’t even taste it.

Health Benefits of this Meal

Brown rice = whole grain (and as with all whole grains, they provide extra fiber and protein, not to mention additional phytochemicals)

Soy milk = protein, calcium, vit D (and since this particular type of soy milk was no sugar added – there’s less sugar than regular milk or other milk analogs)

Craisins = tasty

Flax seeds = ALA (healthy omega 3 [essential] fatty acid) and of course, more fiber)

So for a quick/cheap, yet healthy breakfast try turning other whole grains into hot cereals. It’s kind of fun and leaves a lot of room for experimentation. And it’s so much cheaper and usually a lot healthier than boxed cereals!

Happy breakfasting! And until the next recipe,

Blessings of health and abundant life