Crock-Pot Craziness--Blueberry Chia Quinoa

Happy Super Bowl Sunday Facebook! Instead of telling you what to eat and what not to eat at your parties later, which I am sure you have heard enough of, I am going to share a delicious little breakfast (or anytime snack!) recipe I came across the other day. I was inspired by a friends posting on different crock-pot recipes.

For those of you who do not own a crock pot, I highly recommend investing in one. You can get them for very reasonable prices at Target or Costco. They can make a fairly large amount of food if you are preparing something for a party or just for yourself to eat for the week. I usually prefer to use mine for savory dishes like soups and stews, so when I saw this recipe I thought it would be fun to try something a little different.

Behold...Blueberry Chia Quinoa. Maybe it sounds a little odd to some of you folks who either don't eat breakfast or have no idea what chia seeds or quinoa are, but basically this is a cool little spin-off on your basic boring oatmeal. This recipe calls for quinoa, chia seeds, fresh or frozen blueberries, coconut or almond milk, water, honey and one vanilla bean, split down the middle to soak in the mixture. So you take all these ingredients, put them in a crock pot for 6-8 hours and you have this delicious, healthy, tasty meal.

So, in a nutshell, use 2 cups of water, 2 cups of coconut or almond milk (I used coconut, because I prefer its flavor and nutritional value to almond milk). Then pour 1 cup of quinoa (I prefer Trader Joe's White Organic quinoa for this particular recipe), 4 tablespoons of chia seeds and 1/4th cup of organic honey into the pot. Then take your vanilla bean and split it down the middle and try to scrape the insides out into the pot...this can be a bit tricky, but this was my first time making a recipe that called for the REAL vanilla bean, so I was excited to try it! Then you put the casing of the vanilla bean in the mix as well and let it sit in the crock pot until the quinoa is cooked.

I actually halved the recipe, so I only left mine in the slow cooker for 3 hours. It is a great thing to make when you have a little extra time one evening or are working at home. But the cool thing about a slow cooker/crock pot is you can set the timer and when the allotted time you want to cook something for is up,  it will automatically go to the "keep warm" setting and you can wake up or come home to a warm meal as well.