Crunchy Buckwheat Cereal

  Today, I am going to share one of my new favorite snack food recipes.  This recipe comes from a cookbook that I love, "The Vegetarian Mother's Cookbook".  While eating vegetarian is my choice, I am a little worried about meeting all of my nutritional requirements when I become pregnant.  This is really the only book on the market that I've found, and the recipes in it are great!  The author, Cathe Olson, also provides a pretty good nutritional breakdown of every recipe.

   This recipe is in her breakfast section and is a great alternative to the normal processed cereals or granolas.  I make this snack in small quantities, so that it is easier to mix up and b/c I only use it as a topping.  Once you try it out yourself, you can decide whether you want to make it in larger quantities, i.e. to eat as a cereal.

Crunchy Buckwheat Cereal  (makes 6 servings, 1/4c each)

• 1 1/2c raw buckwheat grouts
• 3Tbsp nut butter (peanut, almond, etc)
• Garnish: maple syrup
• Serve w/: yogurt, fruit, milk, etc

1.  Preheat your oven to 300f.  Spread the buckwheat grouts onto a cookie sheet, and bake in the oven for 20m.
2. Stir it all around, to ensure even cooking, and then place it back in the oven for another 15m.
3. Once it is done baking, scoop it into a container, (I usu. use an old almond butter jar) and mix it up with the nut butter.  I wouldn't recommend adding any maple syrup now, b/c it seems to solidify and makes the cereal pretty hard to break up/scoop out later.
4. I usu. store it at room temp and eat it within a few days.  It's just nut butter and buckwheat, so I imagine it could potentially last awhile.  But, you will probably eat it up pretty fast!

  If you are eating this cereal w/ a flavored yogurt, you prob. won't need the maple syrup, but if you are eating it with a plain yogurt, I usu. add about a tsp to make it a little bit sweet.  :)