Silk Surprise

It's my day off.  I didn't want the same old hurried oatmeal or tea and toast I have on many work days.  I wanted a smoothie for breakfast and I was thinking decadent but nutritarian.  This is what I ended up with:

Combine in a blender:

12 oz Lite Chocolate Silk (soy milk)
1/2 c. cooked quinoa
1/2 c. blueberries
1/2 c. ice
I was resigned to eating it whether it was good or not and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was delicious!  I sipped it as I read my emails this morning and fully enjoyed my breakfast.





While I'm on the subject of Silk Lite Chocolate here's a favorite late night treat:  Mexican hot chocolate: 
 Start with Silk Lite chocolate soy milk and add some cinnamon, vanilla, and a tiny bit of cayenne pepper.  Heat in a mug in the microwave.  Yumm.

Quinoa Apple Smoothie

Photo M Wild Hansen
The color comes from cinnamon and red apple peel.  Yumm!

I really just wanted to publish this smoothie idea but felt I needed to give credit to Paulina Vásquez from Bolivia and call attention to her circumstances as well.
  From the NYTimes article:

" Paulina Vásquez, 52, a housekeeper and mother of three children in their 20s who live with her in a poor district on a steep mountainside of La Paz, sows the crop each year on her family’s land outside the city. The packaged quinoa found in supermarkets is beyond what her family can afford.

quinoa preparation process

Instead, they harvest their own, store it and then prepare it by hand, a painstaking process that includes washing away the resinlike saponin coating that protects the seeds. Sra. Vásquez regularly prepares a sweet drink of quinoa, apple, cinnamon and sugar for her family for breakfast.

But she says many in the younger generation have moved away from it. “People my age and older are eating quinoa,” Ms. Vásquez said. “The young people don’t want it. If there is a pot of noodles everyone is there, as if noodles were nutritious. Even my children are that way.”

For the recipe:
 I used 1/2 c. cooked quinoa, 2 small cored red apples, 1 t. cinnamon, 1/2t. nutmeg
 Blend into a smoothie with a little soy milk 
 I thought it was delicious without sweetening but you could add a little maple syrup.

 Also see Quinoa Quandary