Evening to morning quinoa

I've written about quinoa before and how much I love it.  If you haven't tried it, do.  It works like a sort of couscous/rice type thing but is actually a high protein grain and is more closely related to spinach and beetroot than any actual cereal.  It's nutritionally better for you than other cereals and grains too being high in amino acids.  It's now very readily accessible in pretty much all supermarkets too.

Anyway, I decided to make a quinoa, kale, avocado and chicken salad for dinner last night by lightly wilting some kale leaves in coconut oil, chopping up an avocado and tearing some chicken off a ready roasted one we made earlier in the week, and mixing it all into about a cup of freshly made quinoa (see my earlier Quinoa Queen post about how to cook it nicely).  For a dressing I put 1 tspn miso paste, a few drizzles of tamari sauce (a wheat free soy sauce type thing, also readily available), a small drizzle of olive oil, a splash of water and the juice of 2 lemon wedges in a jar and shook it all up.  I drizzled that and mixed it all up together, served and sprinkled on a few parmesan shavings and walnuts.  That was it! It made 2 portions.

But, I'd purposefully made too much quinoa in the first place which mean that I had more than enough for my breakfast this morning too.

That might sound odd, but quinoa makes a lovely porridge type dish.

All I did for breakfast was add 1/2 cup of the cooked quinoa to a pan with about 1/2 cup coconut milk - not the canned type, the stuff in cartons as a milk alternative.  You can use almond milk or anything really but I fancied coconut today.  Then basically just heat it up for a bit.  The milk won't all get absorbed but it will gradually turn a bit creamier.  Towards the end of the cooking time I also added the juice of half a lime (don't forget to roll the lime on the counter top first to make it easier to get the juice out) to complement the coconut. And that's it!


You can top with what you like but I used a few different berries, 1/2 a magnesium rich, seratonin inducing banana, a drizzle of pure maple syrup, a spoonful of greek yogurt and a few walnuts for extra crunch and added omega 3, ALA and any number of other wonderful walnutty healthy benefits.

It tastes like a cross between rice pudding and porridge with a bit more bite and is lovely and sweet and creamy but without being heavy or stodgy.

So, there we go, quinoa 2 ways from dinner to breakfast.  Now, what's for lunch...

Go-to Gravel

Well what a busy week.

Have swum in lakes and rivers, cached like a mad thing (25 in one day at one point!), kayaked in the pouring rain, walked in the countryside and spent an entire, sweltering day sorting out the garden.  Today's mammoth kayaking jaunt saw us in the thing for nearly 4 hours, against the wind and the current and up a cut that looked anything but navigable.  But we survived and saw 2 kingfishers in return, even if it did mean not eating lunch until about 5pm.

So, not massively surprising that my back, which had mentioned to me earlier in the week that I ought to just be careful, decided to pay me back and seized up with a vengeance.

Which meant that when Alex came home, quite rightly in search of dinner, there wasn't any.

"It's ok, I'll just get a takeaway" he offered.  "No", I said, best wifely martyr face on, "I'm sure I can rustle something or other together."

My favourite (shop bought) dressing

Determined not to be beaten by any of aforementioned setbacks, I shuffled about the kitchen grabbing a selection of random things and assembled them on a plate.  I say random, I did at least attempt to make sure there was a vegetable contingent and a protein contingent (got to love keeping a stash of tinned beans of various descriptions for such moments). Luckily my husband is not of the variety that insists on there being meat on the plate before it is deemed meal worthy.

Turns out I accidentally made a decent enough salad in less time than it would have taken to say "chicken fried rice" (which I guarantee he would have said, had I not made him dinner).  Thanks to a packet of ready made gravel, without which it would have been a bit light and empty and husband would have been hungry again a few minutes later.

Gravel is what my mum and brother label any kind of weird (to them) and wonderful (to me) grain/pulse/wheat type concoction they find in my fridge. I think today's mix included quinoa, blugar wheat, lentils and soy flakes (which sounds vile but is nice).  Apparently my brother was once heard declaring

"There's no point looking for stuff to eat in Emma's fridge, all she has in there is gravel."

Well, gravel saved the day today and will continue to remain a staple in my basked and my fridge so there.

Leftovers lunch

Today saw me, my brother and my grandma set off on an impromptu trip to the beach - well, a beach by a lake in the middle of Surrey but a beach nonetheless!  I had about 20 minutes to spare before they came to pick me up and I decided we needed a picnic.  I didn't fancy picking up some grotty garage sandwiches along the way but didn't really have the time or ingredients to rustle anything up.

Until I spotted the leftover quinoa from last night (see, always make too much!).

I quickly chopped up and bunged in some avocado, cherry tomatoes, parley, feta and lemon juice (all also left overs from other meals), sprinkled on some seasalt and  black pepper, chucked it in a tupperware and was all done.

Grandma and I enjoyed our lovely light summery salad lunch later on. I couldn't, however, convince my brother to partake of any 'gravel', he had a pork baguette instead :).

                

Kale convert

There are very few foods that I do not like.  But when I don't like a food, I really, properly do not like it. At all.

I can count on one hand the foods that fall into this category (that I know of so far):

- Parsley
- Anchovies
- Kale
- Crab
- Whitebait
- Sardines
(there's a small evil fishy theme here)
- and weirdly, cream cakes (not strictly 'food' as such in the cleanest terms but can be eaten nonethless!) or anything involving starchy white things alongside sweet red things, ergo jam sandwiches.  I know, I did say it was weird but I can handle not liking this manky stuff. It just gives me an instant headache and makes me go all woozy and whatnot.

I've also just noticed that either I can't count or I have a deformed hand with rather more fingers than it should have.

The point is, I like most things apart from the above.

Or so I thought.

Turns out my taste buds, my attitude, my sense of adventure or my willingness to challenge convention and the stories I've made about myself based on previous experience, has changed.

I now regularly use parsley in dishes, in fact it's now my herb of choice for freshening things up.  I've eaten crab twice in the last week...I just fancied it, and it didn't kill me (although the smell nearly knocked Alex out, he's not budging on his absolute distaste for any form of seafood).

And I now absolutely love, adore and worship the ground kale, um, grows in.  For something that looks just so green and vegetabley, it's so so tasty. It has its own natural saltiness somehow. And it is unbelievably and ridiculously good for you in so many reasons it's almost impossible to list them. It's basically a very super, superfood.

I think the thing with kale, and parsley actually, and broccoli before them, is that my opinion of them had been formed by 1970s and 1980s style cooking of them - ie boil them to within an inch of their life (and beyond).

I remember a particularly harrowing kale experience where a giant, curly, spiky lump of the stuff got stuck in my throat and threatened to kill me. Ish.  It wasn't nice anyway and I've never forgiven it. Until now, armed with the proper knowledge and skills as to how to actually cook and use it properly.

Tonight's dinner was a case in point.

I'd saved a recipe for warm quinoa and kale salad to my pinterest board a while ago from MindBodyGreen that I wanted to try and having been out all day and eaten a fairly large lunch quite late on, I realised I had all the ingredients so decided to give it a go.

The full recipe is here and to avoid any kind of copyright I won't re-post.

I fully intended to stick to the recipe religiously for once but alas, my tahini had seen better days (mostly prehistoric days judging by the use by date and the state of it) so I adapted a little and used some houmous I had in the fridge in the dressing instead.  Not ideal as it was shop bought rather than home made but life is too short sometimes...anyway I couldn't make my own due to aforementioned tahini sitch.

Another thing that appealed about this salad was the quinoa, of which I am a huge fan.  For any quinoa virgins, it's keen-wa, not kwinowa, and is a sort of peruvian protein packed grain thing that is super easy to cook, yummy to eat and general all round fab and versatile meal base.  It's also gluten free and doesn't seem to bloat me out like couscous etc.

If you're interested, check out my Quinoa Queen post for some tips on cooking the perfect quinoa.

So, the verdict.  It was delicious.  It really packed a punch on the flavour side of things. The houmous and tamari (a kind of wheat free soy sauce) dressing was really rich, musky and tangy, it reminded me a little of miso. The kale had a lovely nutty flavour from the coconut oil and the avocado on top added a light freshness to it all.  I was careful to only cook the kale until it was wilted to retain the crispness and bright green-ness of it which also helped.  The recipe said to season with salt and pepper but I didn't bother as I didn't think it needed it at all.

So, we've decided to add this to our staples and might experiment with a few different varieties or toppings.

Quinoa Queen

I love quinoa. It's true.

If you ask my friends to name a dish I cook, they will all tell you (whilst laughing), couscous.  I rather over did the whole couscous thing in my twenties. It was just so easy and versatile.

For me, quinoa is the new couscous with the added benefit of being gluten free, more tasty, lighter and appears not to bloat me out like couscous did.

My mum and brother often refer to the 'gravel' I like to eat. They are referring, in the most part, to quinoa.  Although I may write a gravel themed post another day about all my other gravelly bits and bobs.  Anyway, I managed to get some quinoa into mum's trolley the other day, even if it was the pre-cooked variety.  Really since quinoa is SO easy to cook there's no need to buy it pre-packed, just added chemicals and whatnot, but needs must sometimes.

Anyway, it's essentially a protein packed peruvian super grain and is super easy to cook, very tasty and very versatile.

For any quinoa virgins, the first thing to know is that it's keenwa, rather than kwinoa.

If you fancy giving it a go, some handy cooking tips to make you into a quinoa queen (or king!):

1. Defo rinse it first.  I hate steps like that, adds boringness into the whole thing but it does make a difference to the taste

2 .Use 1 part quinoa to 1.75 parts water

3. Slow boil with lid on until all the water is soaked up - look out for when the little grains have sort of popped out into spirally twirly things...like this picture.

4. You can add olive oil, salt, lemon juice, stock etc to the cooking bit if you want some added flavour

5. When the water's all soaked up, stick a bit of kitchen roll over the pan and put the lid back on and then be patient for another 5-10 minutes...this last bit of steaming makes it really nice and fluffy

6. You can use it in salads, soups, instead of rice and all sorts.

6. Make too much, then use the rest cold in salads OR as an alternative to porridge with almond or coconut milk, nuts, banana and maple syrup the next morning. DELICIOUS.

Enjoy!