Overnight (no cook) Breakfast Cereal

Overnight Breakfast Cereals by TheYummyLife.com

I am really enjoying Pinterest! Lately I've found some great recipes on there, and today I finally got up the guts to try sprouting some quinoa and making overnight breakfast cereal. Here's one of the main articles that inspired me to try my hand at this:
http://www.theyummylife.com/8_muesli_flavors

So first off let's get to the good stuff, here's the recipe.

Tips:
Sprouting the quinoa first is not necessary, but adds to the nutrients. I set mine out this morning after eating overnight oatmeal with the intention of making the overnight breakfast cereal I'm posting here.
Some people do not feel oats are gluten free. If you do not eat oats, you could make this with just the quinoa
Be sure to grind the flax seed or your body can't process it and you won't get the binding/thickening properties (I use a coffee grinder we have set aside for nuts, seeds, flax, etc)

Ingredients:
3/4 cup sprouted quinoa
1/2 cup dry whole rolled oats (or you could sprout oat groats to use in their place)
1/2 cup apple sauce
2 teaspoons cinnamon
2 tablespoons coconut palm sugar
2 tablespoons ground flax seed
1 dash of salt
1 cup coconut milk

Directions:
mix dry ingredients well, add to sprouted quinoa, then add 1 cup coconut milk (the light kind that is the same amount of fat and less carbs than 1% milk, not the whole fat kind that comes in a can although I'm sure that would be delicious as well)
Stir well, cover container and leave in fridge over night.

Makes 2 servings

Now to the cool (to me) part... how to sprout Quinoa. I have been wanting to learn to sprout various grains, seeds, beans, etc. for a while now, because it raises their nutrient value. It's a really cool little trick of nature, that when they start to sprout, apparently that's when the most nutrients are easily available to the body, because it's when the nutrients are trying to provide what the plant needs to grow. Obviously it's great to plant food and grow your own food, but if you're going to eat grains, seeds, nuts and beans, may as well eat them at the peak of their health impact right? Here's a neat little instructable on how to sprout quinoa: http://www.instructables.com/id/Sprout-Quinoa/ and here's a video using the same method: http://youtu.be/V0oam8VPFws plus there are some great kits out there, but all I used was a sealable plastic container, as shown above. It would probably be best to do this in a glass container now that I think about it, or anything but plastic. I put the quinoa in, put about twice as much water which turned out to be more than I needed, just need enough to cover the quinoa ... and then after the movie I got rid of the floaties, and put more water (from the filter) to just over the quinoa, then covered and let it sit all day, then rinsed again, and used it in the above recipe. They had started to sprout so I didn't feel the need to sprout them any further at that point.

Apparently some people do not do well with raw quinoa, so be aware of your body's response to eating such things, but I've never had a problem eating or processing raw foods. Actually, the entire meal could be considered a faw food breakfast, because nothing in it is ever cooked. I did heat mine up a bit in the morning just for a nice hot cereal feel, but it tasted just the same cold of course, so that's a personal preference issue.

Some people like to dehydrate their quinoa and use them in baking, or as the crispy part of foods like to make cookies have a crunch, on top of yogurt, to coat fish, etc. I'll try that out after we finish building our solar dehydrator and let you know how it goes! In the mean time, give this super easy breakfast cereal a try. It made it really great this morning when we were in a hurry to get out the door because I had a healthy breakfast all ready to go. Once my vegan protein powder arrives, I'll probably add that to it as well.