Fruity Whole-Grain Cereal

Look who got a new cook book!

I am always telling myself to not buy cookbooks. I love to look at them but I am not always great about using them since I find so many great recipes on the internet.  I was in a Barnes & Noble Bookstore last weekend (Christmas shopping... ugh!) and this beautiful book cover caught my eye. I was in a hurry, but when I leafed through the pages very quickly, I saw a number of recipes that looked good and they recipes did not seem to include a bunch of hard to find ingredients.  So the book came home with me.  

Fruity Whole-Grain Cereal (with a big 'ol glob of peanut butter)

And guess what... I already made one recipe out of the cook book. Yay!  And let me tell you, I am so glad I made this recipe.  It is delicious and it's a very nice change pace from oatmeal.  This dish has a lot more texture.  I made the recipe because I had most of the ingredients on hand.  The recipe called for a few kinds of dried fruit (raisins, dates, plums); I just used raisins since that is all I had at home.  I also left the sugar out when I cooked this.

Here are the ingredients (above):

Here are the cooking directions since you can't probably see all that in the photo.

Bring water and salt to a boil.  Add in the barley and rice.  Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer for 8 minutes.

Add in the milk, dried fruit, oats, oat bran, cinnamon, and sugar.  Stir to combine, cover and simmer an additional 10 minutes or until mixture is creamy.  Serve hot.

Makes 4 to 6 servings.  

Reheat in the microwave oven with additional almond or soy milk.