quinoa pancakes

Do you ever toss left over quinoa, cous cous, or rice into a tupperware and into the fridge, after dinner, only to find it shoved in the back a week later and think, man what a waste?  That happens almost every time around here.  I usually pack it up because I hate to throw it out, but we rarely find ourselves pining for quinoa two nights in a row.  And then it gets forgotten.

In a random "pancake" search on Pinterest, I stumbled across a recipe for quinoa pancakes.  Quinoa is a super grain, so why not start off the day with some baked into a pancake?  I was skeptical, but they looked and smelled really good as they were cooking.

The recipe made 11 3.5"(ish) pancakes.  About 79 calories per pancake.  2 pancakes, paired with 2 of yesterday's sweet potato hash browns (and a cup of coffee), was a pretty tasty way to start off the day.

These pancakes are not your typical pancake.  They are more dense and savory, compared to your light, fluffy, sweet buttermilk ones.  So a little sugar free syrup and the sweetness of the sweet potato hash browns gave it just that bit of sweetness that these needed to start the day.  

These would probably be pretty good for dinner with an over-easy egg on top.  And a slice of perfectly cooked bacon.  Mmmm...I think I know what I'm having for dinner.  (Our pantry is pretty bare, so I'm having to make everything stretch until pay day.)

So these are good, but in all honesty, I wouldn't go out of my way to make them.  I prefer my pancakes sweeter and lighter, but this is a really great way to make use of that leftover quinoa.  So, I probably will make these again, I just won't cook a batch of quinoa solely for these pancakes.

By the way, when did my blog turn into a recipe review?  Geesh.

[You can check out my Pinterest pinboard of "tried and true recipes" with a few comments I have added on each of them.  I'm still working on flipping through my recipes to update this board, since this is a newly developed board.]

a little pancake love

I love pancakes.  And I love trying out new pancake recipes.  I recently discovered two recipes that have fallen into the pancake rotation around here.  They are both so delicious that I can't decide which one I like better.  

These ricotta pancakes leave me thinking about them for the rest of the day.  No joke.  The entire recipe has only about 987 calories in it, and it makes about 10-12 pancakes (1/4 c. size).  They are so light and fluffy, thanks to the beaten and folded in egg whites.  Really delicious - even cold the following day.  Those little pockets of ricotta that you bite into are truly delightful.  Make these.  You'll be happy you did.

I made these sweet zucchini pancakes this morning.  While they were cooking, I was a little disappointed in how thin/flat they were, but when I tasted them, I was immediately okay with that fact that they weren't a bit fluffier.  I do think that, next time, I will completely omit the 1/2 c. milk (as suggested by one of the commenters of this recipe on the original recipe source).  That will likely produce a thicker, fluffier pancake.  I'm tempted to whip up another batch right now to find out, but self-control, Allison.  Self-control.  Like I said, I love pancakes.  I love that these are as delicious as they are AND you get a bit of veggies right there in your pancake.  Plus these use Greek yogurt - I'm convinced Greek yogurt makes everything better.  :)  This entire pancake recipe only has 690 calories - that's about 77 calories per 1/4 c. pancake.  Good stuff right there.  Even better is that Callan loved them as much as I did!  (He loves the ricotta pancakes, too.  Possibly a bit more than these.)

Do you have a favorite pancake recipe?  Do you have a go-to recipe and never waiver from it?
Be brave, try these.  I'm pretty sure you won't regret it!