Breakfast Risotto (or Who Said Healthy Food Has to Taste Bad?)

Given that Stuart's indicated he's "a theoretician" this leaves me(!?!) the empiricist here, I'll post an update to my previous hot cereal.

I made one change. I used soy milk for the liquid base, which I've done for breakfast couscous before. This time it was:

2 cups soy milk
2 tbsp flaxseed meal
1 cup (dry) Trader Joe's mixed grains cereal
1 tbsp walnut oil
1 tsp Chinese five spice
pinch of salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1/4 cup dried cranberries

Because of the nature of soy milk, I had to heat it up slowly to prevent it from scalding. I stirred in the ingredients and kept stirring gently throughout. It took a relatively long time for the cereal to hydrate (uh, about fifteen minutes?) and it never fully did, but instead made this really lovely custard-like emulsion from all the stirring and soy milk. The grains lost a fair bit of texture. Sort of a breakfast risotto I guess.

Definitely a keeper.

Also note: Walnut oil (omega 3), flaxseed (omega 3 and fiber), soy milk (whatever it is soy has that nutritionists are always nagging us to eat more of), cranberries (fiber, phytochemicals), multigrain cereal (fiber). So this is pretty darn healthy, filling, and, compared to other fairly "decadent" breakfasts like eggs and bacon, pretty low in calories... all told about 750.

As I woke up late I ate the whole thing myself as a breakfast/lunch, but this would make a nice "main" dish with other things. I suspect you could switch around the spices or dried fruit quite easily, too.