Breakfast variation

I've been quite happy with my new breakfast, but I've been wanting to have a seasonal variation on this. Even with an unusually warm Autumn and availability of strawberries, I want something to see me through the Winter and decided to give this one a try.

As it turned out, this didn't work well at all, for me at least, there was very little flavour to it, though that could be down to the butternut squash, I don't know.

Ingredients

1 large butternut squash
350 ml water
2 roiboos chai teabags
3 tbsp coconut oil
4 tbsp chia seeds
1 tbsp honey

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 °C.
2. Cut the butternut squash in two and scoop out the seeds. Then bake in the oven, cut side up for about 45 minutes until it has gone soft.
3. Scrape out some 400 g of the baked squash and place in a large saucepan together with the water and the contents of the teabags and the coconut oil, then bring to a simmer. Remove from the heat and set a side for a few minutes to cool a bit.
4. Stir in the chia seeds and honey, making sure that there are no lumps.
5. Leave for an hour at least to allow the chia seeds to swell a bit.
6. Warm up before serving.

The amounts above were enough for 5 breakfasts for me and I might need to experiment a bit to get the flavour right - I think there was too much coconut oil and not enough sweetness. Unfortunately I don't know how to determine how sweet a butternut squash would be, so some adjustments for each batch would be required.

I also didn't see much point in the roiboos chai - I think some cinnamon should do the trick and I think maple syrup works really well with butternut squash, so I'd swap that out for some of the coconut oil.

The really good thing is that one batch was enough for the whole week and I only needed a quick whizz in the microwave to warm it up, no other effort required, meaning possibly a few extra minutes' sleep.

I served with flaked almonds and blueberries, which was OK, but still not enough to make this a meal to look forward to.