A couple weeks ago, I brought some sort of quinoa + the kitchen sink lunch to work, and my coworker Beryl got very excited about it because she liked how it tasted and had only had bad experiences with quinoa in the past. The next day, I arrived to find this box on my desk, courtesy of Ms. Beryl herself!

Of course, this box contained quinoa flakes (probably the reason that Beryl thought she had texture complaints with quinoa) and was potentially purchased pre-millennium, but I decided nevertheless to see what I could do with it.



My first venture was to use the qunioa flakes as instructed: in hot cereal form.



I cooked it with apples, milk, and cinnamon and topped it with yogurt …



… and I could see why Beryl hadn’t been a fan! Do yourself a favor and do not decide you need to try quinoa flakes ASAP.

Obviously, despite the breakfast cereal failure, I was not about to throw good nutrition away! I broke out some other inedible and/or undesirable items I’d been saving for a rainy day: stale apple cinnamon cookies, 1/2 dozen corn muffins from a donation my office received, honey that has never tasted quite right to me …



… caramel nut brownie mini-luna bars …



… Omega-3 peanut butter that tastes like fish oil (ewwwwwww) …



… and blended it all in a bowl with eggs, ground flax, a ton of shredded carrots, a bag of shredded sweetened coconut, and voila!



I made 12 mini muffins that Erik devoured in approximately 30 seconds, six regular-sized muffins …



… and one loaf that I brought to work on my assigned “bring breakfast to the meeting” day:



It was the perfect, hearty, filling, comforting breakfast for a conveniently chilly winter morning!