buckwheat berry breakfast

This breakfast has staying power for me; and it tastes good too.

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup buckwheat groats, uncooked; note: substitute any favorite grain or pseudo-grain (e.g.,  oat groats, oats, steel-cut oats, quinoa, even brown or black rice)
• berries or another fruit, about 1/2 lb 
• few spoonfuls of homemade soy yogurt or 1 spoon of WholeSoy plain unsweetened soy yogurt (it's stronger than home-made);  this is optional
• ceylon cinnamon or other favorite spice
• small amount of sweetener if you feel you need it

I soaked the buckwheat groats overnight, rinsed them, add the cinnamon, and then microwaved in water for 1 minute or 2.  I let that cool while prepping everything else.  If you are using rice, you would have to cook that.  You could always cook a batch ahead of time, refrigerate and take out 1/2 cup for this meal.  I'd cook steel-cut oats and oat groats, but would prep regular oats like the buckwheat.   Add the cinnamon while cooking.

For the fruit, I used 1/2 lb of strawberries and 1/2 box of blackberries (3 oz).   I cut up the strawberries.

 Here's what mine looked like:

Stir and eat!   I enjoyed it.

Nutritional info:  Calories 300;  protein 11 g (12%),  fat 4 g (11%), carbs 63 g (77%).

Comfort Food

One of my most favorite salads is also one of the most healthiest.  I've not been eating berries much this winter because they are out of season in the US.  But housemate started clamoring for fruit salads so I bought the berries from faraway places and was surprised to find that they taste good.  Well, I guess I may as well enjoy this extreme privilege to eat berries from chili in winter in Wisconsin.   So I'll probably start making this salad twice a week (the days after I go grocery shopping).   The carrots and sugar snap peas are just my first course (this was my packed lunch for work).  Underneath that is lettuce, red cabbage (locally grown and very sweet this time of year), broccoli, cauliflower, seed mixture, flavored vinegar, some combination of berries and maybe bananas depending on what looks fresh and ripe when I shop (e.g., strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, and banana).   This is so yummy.  So are the carrots.  I'll discuss that in my next post.  Oh, and I don't just have one of these, I have 3 of them:  breakfast, lunch and dinner!

lunch on the bike path

So today I was riding my bike along the bike path like I've done for the past 15 years, and I passed by some people eating berries from a tree.  They said, "These are good!"  so I stopped and asked what they were.  They were mulberries from a mulberry tree, and it turns out there are a few more of these trees on the bike path.  Well, these were fantastic!  Perfectly ripe and sweet, and there were tons of them!   I felt like a wild animal who struck it rich.  Like a bear discovering a giant honeycomb.  I just stood there and ate a ton of berries.   How could I be so ignorant all these years and not know that at certain times of the year, I can stop on my bike every day and eat a ton of mulberries?!  

Then I got home and decided to continue the feast and ate raspberries in my backyard.   I'll have to reserve more time on my bike ride for mulberries.  I may not even need to buy berries this week, just have my raspberries and mulberries for breakfast.

Here's a picture of the mulberries:

Here's the mulberry tree for future reference (so I can remember what they look like!):

They do stain your fingers.  My mouth seems okay from this distance:

 I told housemate I want a mulberry tree and she said, no, they are too messy.   harumph.