9 Grain Breakfast Cereal

Never in my life have I had or cooked so many hot breakfasts. In years gone by I was quite happy with toast or cereal. Actually, I craved toast. I could eat bread with every meal and in excess. Now that I make my own gluten free bread - which is really, really good if I do say so myself, I don't eat bread to excess. I really do think that those things that you absolutely love and can't imagine life without and crave with every fiber of your being are those things that probably aren't any good for you. So now that we are gluten and dairy free, breakfasts are almost always hot. Our most frequent breakfast is our homemade hot cereal. Because gluten free grains are ridiculously expensive (and I have to say that that really really picks my ass!!) we buy in large quantity bulk. From those whole grains we make breakfast cereal, aka porridge, and all the flours I use for baking. One of my favorite web sites has detailed information on the nutritional profile of all sorts of grains and beans and it is also where we bought a bunch of our storage stuff from. All these grains together pack so much more nutrition than most other breakfasts possibly could. Best yet, we all love it. Yes even the kids.

1 cup multi grain wild rice blend (a mix we purchased that has wild, red, brown, black etc etc)
1 cup millet
1 cup buckwheat
1 cup quinoa
1 cup dried corn
1 cup flax seeds
1 cup sesame seeds
1 cup Teff
1/2 cup amaranth seeds

We grind the first 5 ingredients until we get a course texture. The last 3 go in whole. Yes, you should grind at least some of the flax seeds in order to break them open to get all the nutrition out of them but leaving them whole gives some extra crunch. Mix it all up and store in the fridge. To cook: bring 3 1/2 cups of water to a boil, add 1 t salt. Add 1 cup cereal and reduce the temp to med low. Simmer while stirring frequently for about 20 minutes or until desired consistency.

This is really high in fiber, protein, iron and B vitamins. And with some brown sugar, agave nectar or fruit it is really satisfying. As a kid I always had porridge with milk. With this we eat it plain with sugar but my mom and dad liked it with milk. Hmmm I wonder how it would be with coconut milk??? I will have to try that.

I will try to get around to posting my bread recipe too. I made it yesterday but with this cereal blend ground into flour and subbed that into the recipe. It was really good.