Here’s an update on my husband’s diet progress: he’s lost 17 pounds since my daughter imposed a strict “no bagels for breakfast” rule. One of the things I’ve changed most dramatically for his diet has been his breakfast eating, and he loves this breakfast quinoa bake. The quinoa provides a long energy burn from relatively small amounts of grain, and the sweetness of the fruit makes him feel like he’s eating dessert for breakfast. We all need to feel satisfied with what we’re eating while dieting, or the chances of sticking to it will disappear as quickly as our good intentions when confronted with a gooey chocolate brownie on a day when there’s no breakfast or lunch.

If you want to double the recipe, you should divide it between two separate pans. When I doubled it and put it in a single large baking dish, the milk and egg mixture didn’t seep through all of the quinoa and it was dry at the bottom. I like to make this the day before and heat it up the next morning, because I feel certain that anything that requires me to get up an hour earlier in the morning to cook is not going to happen. It does keep through two breakfasts, and you can use any type of fruit you like, though I like the sweet/tart combination of the blueberries and apples. You can use strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, mangoes, pears or stone fruits. Bananas are best used when they whole thing is going to be eaten in the same day, as they will turn brown.

Adapted from Greatist.com

Note: quinoa needs to be well washed before using. Make sure you rinse the uncooked quinoa well, or it will leave a soapy aftertaste in anything you put it in