Hey friends!

I hope you had a great weekend and were able to ease into your Monday! I had a relaxing weekend that included a trip to Costco and a little recipe testing. I don’t go to Costco very often, but I felt like I hit the jackpot yesterday – I bought a four pound bag of organic quinoa for $11.49! I was so excited about my affordable super food find that I had to come up with a recipe using quinoa! And since breakfast is everyone’s favorite meal of the day, why not create some yummy quinoa breakfast bars? : )

Ingredients:

• 1 pint fresh blueberries
• 1 1/2 c. dry oats
• 1 c. cooked quinoa (1/3 c. dry quinoa will yield a full cup)
• 1/3 c. coconut or maple sugar (I used coconut)
• 1/4 c. chia seeds
• 1/4 c. nut butter (I used cashew butter)
• 2 spotty bananas, mashed
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 lemon, juiced (about 2 tbsp.)
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1 tsp. cinnamon

Pre-heat oven to 350° F. In a bowl, mix together the dry oats, cooked quinoa, coconut sugar, chia seeds, baking powder and cinnamon. In another bowl, mix together the nut butter, mashed bananas, eggs, lemon juice and vanilla extract. Once the dry ingredients are completely combined, add in the wet ingredient mixture and thoroughly mix together. Once the wet and dry ingredients are mixed, fold in the blueberries.

Spray a 8×8 or 9×9 pan with cooking oil (I used avocado oil because the smoke point is 500°). Place the mixture into the pan and evenly spread it out. Place in the oven for roughly 30 minutes, or until the top is firm and browned.

Allow to cool before cutting into squares. Store in an airtight container in the fridge.

At nine servings, each bar has 211 calories, 6.3 grams of fat, 34.7 grams of carbohydrates, 6.2 grams of protein and 14.1 grams of sugar. The ingredients are all recognizable and adjustable. I love that you can control the amount of sugar in this, and that most ingredients are easily exchangeable.

I’m so excited to have these for breakfast for the rest of the week! I hope you enjoy them too!

Naturally,

Ari