Backcountry Vegan Camp Meal: A Quinoa-nundrum on Grains

Ah, quinoa - the mother of grains - packed with nutrition & protein and very few calories.  However, I discovered that cooking black quinoa (which I selected for sheer novelty) - took way too long to cook on the trail.  My meals with quinoa included:

• quinoa with granulated maple sugar, raspberries & blueberries for breakfast
• quinoa with vegetable broth, onions, zucchini, carrots & peppers

The basic recipe is 1 c quinoa + 1.5 c water - 12 minutes for white and 15 minutes for black.  It didn't work - after 20 minutes, the quinoa was still quite hard.  Nothing attributable to elevation - sea level for both home and travel cooking attempts.

For my subseqent attempts to cook quinoa on the trail, I soaked the quinoa til it sprouted - and then put it in a pot with enough water, covered it and simmered - it took the better part of 40 minutes before I moved to someone's campfire. 

I cooked quinoa 3 times on the trail and each time was the same result.  I think I may try to dehydrate cooked quinoa to see if that works better on the trail.

Oatmeal is definitely going in my pack next time!