healthy laps

I made a new, fun and delicious breakfast this morning!  I cooked more quinoa than I needed for our dinner dish last night, so I made sure to save the plain leftovers for another meal.  I have seen numerous quinoa granola recipes floating around the food blog world, and I thought I should try it out.  I decided to create a quick version of a Quinoa Granola Yogurt Parfait that I could make within the 10 minutes I had for breakfast this morning.

Since my quinoa had a tropical kick from being cooked in pineapple juice, I decided to pair it with yogurt.  Here is what I did to create this quick breakfast treat!

I spread out my leftover quinoa onto my toaster oven baking sheet (you could definitely make this in the oven as well!), and baked it at 400°F for 5 minutes.

After 5 minutes, I took the quinoa out and moved it around to make sure everything was crisping up.  At this point, I added chopped walnuts and raisins and put it back into the toaster, decreasing the heat the 350°F for 5 minutes.  I was afraid that the walnuts were going to burn if I kept the heat up!

After 10 minutes is was hot and definitely had a little more bite to it than it did last night.  I was running out of time, so I took it out and let cool for a few minutes.  You could definitely leave this in longer for a more granola-like texture, but this was perfect for a quick breakfast.

Then, made a parfait!  I layered my glass with wildberry Chobani greek yogurt, then quinoa granola, then bananas and repeated.

I sprinkled a little Galaxy Vanilla Granola on top with a drizzle of pure maple syrup.

Mmmm…this was tasty!

Lunch consisted of more quinoa and leftovers.  The Pineapple Cashew Quinoa is delicious the next day as well.  The flavors all blend together more, and the cashews were not as crunchy, but still obviously great!

And, my favorite Larabar as an afternoon snack – Coconut Cream Pie!

Dinner was also quick!  I had to get started on some baking projects (recipes to come over the weekend).

We had leftover Spinach Salad from last night as well, so I had a big plate of that.  Grape tomatoes, mozzarella, chickpeas, diced turkish figs, pear, a few pecans and pear infused vinegar.

Surprisingly, very good!

Along with the salad we cooked some low & slow sweet potatoes, which I saw recently on Kath’s Blog.  These are so easy to make, and they are the most delicious sweet potatoes that I have ever tasted!  Wash off your potato and cut it up like this:

Then, place the slices on a cookie sheet sprayed with a little olive oil.  I brushed the potatoes with a little coconut oil and sprinkled them with salt and pepper.

Bake them at 350°F for 30 minutes, then turn the heat up to 400°F and bake for another 20 minutes.  This was the perfect amount of time for ours!  They came out of the oven steaming hot, browned and oozing with sap.

They were a little crispy on the outside, and so so soft and creamy on the inside.  The best sweet potatoes ever!

Paired great with a salad.

Filed under: Eating Laps, Recipes | Tagged: larabar, quinoa, salad, sweet potatoes |