Hot Cereal

Serves 1

Often times I make more rice or quinoa for a meal than I use, and I'm left with plain cooked grains sitting in my refrigerator. This is some brown rice left over from when I made stir-fry.

I've found that one of my favorite ways to use up these cooked grains is to use them for hot cereal in the morning. I put the cooked grains in a pot with some non-dairy milk, a little sweetener (this time I used maple syrup), cinnamon, and nutmeg, and let the grains heat up while the liquid reduces.

After it's done cooking, I like to top my hot grain cereal with dried fruit, toasted nuts, and maybe a little more sweetener if needed. For this batch, I used goji berries, a Chinese fruit that is considered a "super-food". They're a lot like raisins with slightly more noticeable seeds.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup cooked whole grains* (brown rice and quinoa are my favorites for this recipe)
• 1/2 cup vegan milk
• 2 Tbs. sweetener such as agave syrup, maple syrup, coconut sugar, or brown rice syrup
• 1/8 tsp. ground nutmeg
• 1/8 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1/8 cup dried fruit, such as chopped dried apricots, raisins, or goji berries (optional)
• 1/8 cup nuts, toasted (optional)

Add cooked grains, milk, sweetener, nutmeg and cinnamon to small saucepan and heat over medium heat. Stir occasionally, until liquid is absorbed and reduced. Remove from heat and serve with dried fruit and nuts.

*This recipe can be adapted for oatmeal as well. I personally don't like hot oatmeal porridge, so you probably won't find a recipe for oatmeal on this blog, but you could easily adapt this one, adding more milk and cooking dry oatmeal in the milk.