Ok so before anyone totally laughs at me for writing a cooking post I gotta say that from the beginning I’ve loved to cook. It’s one of my simple joys to experiment and make new things up.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it’s less than tasty… sometimes, well, it gets a little crazy. Such as the first time I made up a recipe – I was 9. My mother was on errands and I was stuck in a travel trailer for an hour by myself because we were on our way to Colorado having just sold our house but having a couple weeks left before we moved out to this beautiful state we were borrowing a friend’s trailer to live in. I decided that I had to make cookies. I wanted to surprise my family with a yummy treat. So I gathered all my courage and my ingredients and started mixing. Yes, a little flower, a little sugar, a little butter, a little milk, some baking soda (yes I knew not to use powder for cookies) and then the most important part… BLUE food coloring. You see, I was obsessed with blue. Everything had to be blue. I whipped up the blue goop and turned to get a cookie sheet and knocked the bowl onto the floor. I wasn’t going to let a silly mistake mess up my masterpiece so I scooped it all off the floor and made my cookies. I baked them and they came out looking something like cookies. However, I had neglected one small detail – we had a dog. *Warning: the following might be gross for some people* She was a sweet dog, a very obedient dog, and a beautiful dog. But she was also a hairy dog – and it was the season for her to be shedding. And yes, you guessed it. One bite of my beautiful blue cookies would result in dozens of dog hairs being wedged between your teeth, stuck to your tongue, and tickling the back of your throat. Needless to say, I didn’t make cookies unsupervised again for a long… long time.

Fast forward to today. I can cook. Not the best in the world but I know my way around a kitchen very well. I can bake, stir fry, and follow any recipe (most of the time lol). Anyway, tonight I had to share the story of what I made tonight. If anyone doesn’t know, Quinoa is an amazing grain. Although it’s not truly a grain, read about it at Wikipedia here. It is a complete protein with high fiber content. It is gluten free, has tons of vitamins and minerals, basically it’s a guilt free way to get carbs!

Quinoa naturally has a slight earthy flavor that some do not care for but personally I enjoy the taste. It can be ground into flour and made into amazing pizza crust (see Melissa’s recipe here). Tonight I decided to experiment. I took a small serving of quinoa and cooked it in water but added vanilla and a small portion of cinnamon stick. Once it was cooked I sprinkled with sugar and mixed in some butter and almond milk…. it was simply AMAZING! There was no usual quinoa flavor and it was like eating rice pudding but so much healthier!

I failed to take pictures not thinking it would be worthy of a blog post but the next time I will and will post them! The essential recipe is as follows:

1 cup quinoa
2 cups water
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cinnamon stick
Dash of salt

Bring the water to a boil and add the quinoa. Add the vanilla, cinnamon stick and salt (if desired). Reduce heat to low and simmer covered until the water is gone. (Quinoa cooks about as quickly as white rice – probably 20-25 minutes)

Serve hot with butter, sugar, and milk (or even better, vanilla almond milk!)

It’s amazing, so yummy and pretty close to guilt-free! And at least it’s not blue!