For the month of March, I am taking my blogging inspiration from Therese at Road Wordy. Therese is the middle of a 100 day challenge to use the ingredients she bought for a recipe then kind of forgot about using again. She has dedicated herself to finding recipes to use up the things she already has.
After cleaning out my pantry last week I found myself in a similar position. I have a lot of partially used bags of things like quinoa, millet, barley, farro, amaranth, buckwheat, rice, wild rice, lentils, dark rye flour, pumpernickel flour, bread flour, don’t even get me started on the craziness of my canned pantry. So for the month of March, i am going to dedicate myself to finding recipes to use up what I already have. I will only buy milk, eggs, fruit and vegetables. My goal is to publish 15 new recipes featuring the things I have in my pantry in March.
My first cleaning out the pantry recipe is Birdseed Cereal from Big Sis, Little Dish. I loved her story about how her husband fed this mixture to his two doves and they have been around a very long time. I don’t know if it is what is giving the doves a long life or not I just think it is a tasty breakfast I can share with my entire flock of 8 parrots, 1 grumpy gerbil and 2 rats.
I love how versitile this recipe is. I didn’t have any sunflower seeds or chia seeds so I left them out. I added some dried cranberries to my first batch because, well, I love cranberries. It would be equally good with dried apricots, dried apples or perhaps, dried mango. I didn’t have any dried fruit for the second batch so I used some cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. You could experiment with whatever spices you like best. I serve the cereal with a splash of milk and a bit of sugar.
Pantry items used – quinoa, amaranth, millet and buckwheat
Birdseed Cereal
2 cups quinoa, amaranth, buckwheat, millet and teff
1/4 cup sunflower seeds, optional
2 TBS chia seeds, optional
Mix all ingredients in a jar, using any ratio of seeds you want. I used a 1/2 cup each of quinoa, amaranth, buckwheat and millet because those were what I had on hand. If using teff, keep the mixture in the fridge or freezer. Mix well before scooping it out to cook it because it likes to settle.
To make the cereal
6 TBS cereal mix
1 cup water
Combine water and the cereal in a small saucepan. Bring to the mixture to a boil then reduce the heat to a simmer. Cover and cook for about 20 minutes.
If you have a pressure cooker, add all the ingredients to a heat proof bowl. Place the bowl on the trivet in the pressure cooker liner. Add enough water to the liner to bring the pressure cooker to pressure. Lock the lid. Set the timer to high pressure for 15 minutes. Use a natural pressure release.
A Cuppa And Conversation 