When I moved to Canada from Romania 10 years ago all I knew how to make in the kitchen were three recipes:

  • Chicken thighs and sliced potatoes roasted in the oven
  • “Eggy mushrooms” (I gave this name to beaten eggs mixed with sliced canned mushrooms and fried in oil)
  • Boiled pasta with tomato paste and slices of sausages. I was diluting the paste with water. Why? Because I found it too thick 🙂 . I could have used tomato sauce, but I did not know any better at that time 🙂 . Also, everything was sprinkled with a little bit of black pepper because too much black pepper was too spicy for me.

Yes, you could say that, as a recovering picky eater, I was not very adventurous in the kitchen and even more, that I did not spend too much time in the kitchen before moving here. Indeed, I did not, as most of my meals were prepared by my mother. Thank you, mom!

And then I moved to Canada… I do not know what changed: maybe because my Canadian boyfriend (who later became my husband) knew how to make a lot of delicious recipes (thank you, my mother-in-law!) or maybe because my roommates were cooking almost every night.

The important thing is that I was inspired, so I started spending more time in the kitchen. Initially just following recipes from cookbooks or found on the internet, and later coming up with recipes on my own. Like the next one, which is a very basic recipe since all one does is mix a bunch of ingredients in less than five minutes (as long as you have them in the house and you do not have to go shopping for them).

This is a recipe that is easy to make, nutritious, and tasty. We eat it often for breakfast.

Tasty Tuesday: Good Morning Parfait
Prep time: 
Total time: 
Serves: 1
 
Good Morning Parfait
Ingredients
  • 1 cup yogurt (for my daughter I use homemade goat milk yogurt and for my son who has dairy sensitivity I use the cream that forms on top of chilled canned coconut milk)
  • 1 tablespoon hemp seeds
  • 1 tablespoon coconut flakes
  • 3 tablespoons raisins
  • 2 tablespoons fresh or frozen blueberries (if you use frozen, the parfait will turn blue-purple, but the taste will still be great) - you can use any berries you like, even a mixture of berries (raspberries and blueberries for example)
  • few walnuts - broken up in small pieces (you can use any nuts you like)
Instructions
  1. Put everything in a bowl, mix, and enjoy.
Notes
* if you are nut-free, replace the nuts with sunflower or pumpkin seeds instead

This is a good recipe that one can mix with oatmeal in the morning. Just omit the yogurt and add the other five ingredients on warm oatmeal (oats mixed with milk or water). It makes a delicious porridge.

This breakfast is rich in:

  • protein from yogurt, hemp seeds, nuts
  • healthy fats from hemp seeds, coconut flakes, nuts, coconut milk (if using)
  • antioxidants, vitamin K, vitamin C, and manganese from blueberries

Did your cooking and baking abilities change over the years? Are you more confident now or you haven’t got much practice and your ground is still shifting when you are in the kitchen 😉 ?