Buckwheat Banana Pancakes

Holiday mornings have a much more relax way of unfolding... thankgoodness too!

Christmas morning was certainly one of these mornings, with a feel of pancakes in the air. I personally cannot eat conventional pancakes, nor do I care to. There are much too heavy for proper digestion, and the wheat flour just does not agree with me.
Buckwheat, on the other hand, has a much lighter consistency and more pronounced taste.

Buckwheat Banana Pancakes:

• 3/4 C Buckwheat flour
• 1/4 C Sorghum flour
• 2 Bananas
• 1 C Almond milk (more or less)

This makes about 8 pancakes.
 
Mash one first ripe banana in a bowl with a fork.

Quinoa For Breakfast

Most people have a pretty well defined idea as to what constitute Breakfast food. I never really thought of quinoa as such until a trip to Utah earlier this year. We stop at the Love Muffin Cafe in Moab, UT, after cycling into town from our campsite and I was Hungry. There is was, on the chalk board menu, and it sounded perfect.

The funny thing is I started noticing it other place after that... maybe my mind had shifted somehow and it had been there all along -I just never saw it. Ever have that happened to you?

It was great! A nice bowl of quinoa, chopped fruits and dried raisins served with soy milk on the side. No milk for me so I poured a little water in for moisture and it hit the spot.

Fruit Cereal

Now and then I like to take a break from the Green Smoothie in the morning... not all that often, I admit, still, one must vary sometimes, right?

Yesterday was one of those days so I had a big bowl of Fruit Cereal, a recipe inspired by some of the recipes in Brendan Brazier's The Thrive Diet.

If you are using Chia Seeds, always start with this step:
Place about 1 Tbsp of Chia Seeds in a small bowl and generously cover with water. Let it stand about 5-10 mn. or until it turns into a gel.

Chia Power Pudding

When I saw these little chia seed bags at our local food cottage, I could not believe my luck and grabbed one on the spot. In the back of my mind was this very dish: Chia seed pudding (similar to tapioca pudding), which I had been thinking about of late.

The first time I had heard of chia seeds was at one of Dr. Ritamarie's monthly potlucks and it was incredible. It's really as simple as it gets to make, and so well within my range... ha, ha.

Here is a great article on the Living and Raw Food site. It's a bit long and worth your time.

Chia seeds are very versatile and can be added to a number of every day food, like hot or cold cereal, yogurt, jam and jellies. This site recommends a 9:1 as water to seed ratio when soaking. In 30 mn the seeds will have turned into a chia gel that keeps in the refrigerator for a couple weeks. 1 pound of seeds makes 10 pounds of gel...

Green Smoothie #2

The great thing about smoothies is that anything goes.
Whatever you have on hand and like as a combination is good. No need for anything fancy or a quick last minute run to the store because you are missing a key ingredient, just go with what you have.

Refer to this previous post for basis of Green Smoothie making.

Apple Ginger Breakfast Medley

Breakfast generally means green smoothie for me (see side links). That's what I prefer and what seems to balance me the best. Every few days though, I feel like something else.

That was the case when I went looking for new ideas in Dr. Ritamarie's Power Breakfast book, and Apple Ginger Breakfast Medley won out.

Green Smoothie

"Breakfast is a the most important meal of the day."

How many times have we heard that? Be it from parents, co-workers, friends, or even commercials on tv trying to sell us the latest so called "healthy" breakfast bar or cereal with all its added synthetic vitamins.

How breakfast is indeed important has more to do, I believe, in how it sets the tone for the rest of the day.