Millet and Amaranth Warm Breakfast Cereal

I love breakfast. It would be my favorite meal of the day. I sometimes seriously wonder how I could go so many years without hardly ever having breakfast! And when I did, it usually was bacon and eggs with toasts and potatoes. Or pancakes drenched in maple syrup. Not the healthiest!

Lately, I’ve stumbled upon so many brilliant ideas on the various blogs that I read, I feel there aren’t enough available mornings in the week for me to try them all… well, week-end mornings, that is. See, I always eat my breakfast at work on weekdays and I can’t imagine starting to cook and bake at work, so my week day options are a tad more limited. Plus, lately, I’m hardly ever at home on the week-end lately, so I think I’m gonna have to start eating breakfast at night if I am to try any of those lovely breakfast ideas!

One of the ideas I was most excited about was given to me by Leanne over at Healthful Pursuit. After I had mentioned I was looking for creative ideas to use millet, she suggested I make warm cereal out of millet and amaranth. Being so passionate about warm cereal, I immediately fell in love with the idea and started dreaming of the day when I would finally get this delightful mixture in my mouth for the first time. But before I could do that, I had to actually find amaranth, which was going to prove much more difficult than I thought. I had to go to 3 different stores before I finally found the coveted grain and even they had told me they didn’t have any. Luckily, it was a newly opened store and I was curious to see what kind of products they carried and I ended up finding a bag of the precious stuff after spending a good half hour going through all the shelves…

Now that I finally had all the required ingredients, I was all good and ready to try the dish. One problem remained… I was not going to have breakfast at home for at least 2 weeks, maybe even 3. No way I was going to wait that long. So I ended up having this for lunch yesterday. I don’t know if Leanne would’ve done it that way, but what I did is I cooked the millet and amaranth together, much like I would oatmeal. Then I added dried fruits, honey and toasted hazelnuts to the mixture. The result was a creamy, sweet and unctuous warm cereal that reminded me a little bit of cream of wheat in texture, mixed with tapioca pudding. In fact, in find amaranth, once cooked, looks a lot like tapioca. And I LOOOVE tapioca. Needless to say this was a big winner for me and I will be having it again!

Ingredients
(serves one very hungry breakfast junkie or 2 less hungry normal individuals…)

• ½ cup millet
• ¼ cup amaranth
• 1½ – 2 cups water
• Generous pinch of salt

• 1 tbsp liquid honey (I used buckwheat)
• 3 dried prunes, sliced
• 2 dried apricots, sliced
• 1 dried peach, sliced
• 10 toasted hazelnuts, crushed

Instructions

• Bring water to a boil. Add salt, amaranth and millet. Reduce heat and simmer for 15-20 minutes, until mixture is very creamy and all water has absorbed. You can add more water if necessary.
• Add honey, dried fruits and nuts. Stir to combine and transfer into serving bowl.
• Add cold milk if desired. (I like to add cold soy milk to my warm cereal. I love the contrast in temperature and how it makes the cereal even creamier!)