Will it be cardboard for breakfast?

Sometimes I want to make a recipe just because I am curious to know what it would taste like.  While I usually choose a recipe based on the fact it sounds delicious, today I have a recipe that I can't imagine the flavours of because many ingredients are unfamiliar to me.  I want to give it a go BECAUSE of this though.  Now that I think about it, I do somewhat have an expectation of the taste, and it's not all that positive in truth!  A few of the ingredients look like Rice Bubbles and even when I was a little girl, I thought they tasted of nothing much at all.  So, the recipe itself is just a measure and stir job.  Perfect as it's a breakfast.  Made in quantities that mean it could be made ahead of time and simply stored in an airtight container.

Here are the ingredients I am using (noting that a couple of them are my inclusions):

The unfamiliar ingredients here are the puffed amaranth, puffed millet, millet rice flakes and LSA. 

The recipe is gluten-free.  As far as I know, none of the family have a gluten intolerance, but that doesn't mean we HAVE to eat gluten does it?  I had hoped that in making this recipe, it wouldn't end up tasting like an apology for a recipe using gluten - like the first gluten-free breads that I heard were not worth trying.  I saw the recipe on Good Chef Bad Chef, the premise of which is that the 'bad chef' cooks unhealthy food and the 'good chef' make healthier options.  I still dislike the idea that some food is 'bad', but that doesn't mean I can't choose the healthier options sometimes.  In fact, the recipe Adrian 'Bad Chef' Richardson (a chef I am a huge fan of - his restaurant is La Luna Bistro in Carlton North) DID look OTT even to me.   It was a 'big breakfast with oatcakes' and the 'garnish' included;

2 blood Sausage

2 pork sausage

6 Eggs

200 gms thick cut Bacon

4 field Mushroom

2 cooked Nicola Potato

1 large ox heart Tomato

2 red onions

all cooked in goose fat!  Perhaps a dish to share.

Anyway, the recipe I chose this time was a muesli, here's my take:

Light and Puffy Muesli

Metric cup measures are 250ml, Australian tablespoons are 20ml.

1 cup puffed amaranth (or puffed quinoa)

1 ½ cups puffed millet

2 cups organic millet rice flakes

¼ cup sunflower seeds

¼ cup pepitas (green pumpkin seeds)

1 tbsp LSA (linseed [aka flaxseed], sunflower seed and almonds ground up together)

generous ¼ cup chopped walnuts or your favourite nut

1/4 cup chopped dried pineapple

1 tbsp goji berries

1 tbsp dried cranberries

Mix all ingredients together and store in an airtight container.

Serve with your preferred options, such as almond milk, low fat milk, rice milk, fresh fruit, goat milk, yoghurt etc.

Makes about 350g which sounds like nothing, but it IS 'light and puffy'!  The volume measure this makes is about a liter.  Clearly though, the quantity of ingredients I bought was enough to make far more.  I will store the LSA in the freezer, and make this muesli a few more times I think.

This is really good.  I admit, freely, that the two puffed ingredients do have a touch of Rice Bubble about them, but because of the other ingredients that light addition really works.  My children can find the goji berries a little tart on their own, this was the main reason for the addition of the pineapple, but I liked the extra sweetness too.  I had mine with low fat milk and passionfruit yoghurt.  I am curious to experiment with the alternatives to cow milk too - this seems like the perfect cereal to do this with.

I read about the ingredients to see if there was any point using them apart from the gluten-free reasoning.  Things like 'essential nutrients', 'micro-nutrients', 'high quality protein', Omega 3 fatty acids, and of course flavour - surely still the most important reason.

So for everyday eating, when you don't feel like a 'big breakfast' this might make a great substitute.  It's somehow both light and filling, I know nuts seem to leave a feeling of fullness, but I can't help feeling those light as a feather ingredients may be giving me a satisfied filling?  Don't know, don't care, but it's working for me.  And so, to answer my title question, 'Will it be cardboard for breakfast?'  No!  Great change for breakfast, not cardboardy at all, I really do think this was a worthwhile experiment.  Thanks to the author of the recipe Janella Purcell who's views on food I may not always agree with, but she certainly knows her way around a health food shop!