Avocado Salad with Quinoa

Quinoa is all the rage these days, and no wonder - according to HuffPo, it is high in protein, low in calories, and gluten free. It's also kind of expensive, I bought 1.5lbs for $17. I think you could get a metric ton of rice for $17. But apart from all the health benefits, it just tastes really yummy - and I find it is easier to cook than rice. Plus rice doesn't go well in a cold salad.

Anyway, SO found this and emailed me the recipe. "So what are we having with the salad?" I asked. "It will be hearty, we don't need anything else" she responded. Hmmm, we'll see about that. It took surprisingly long to prepare, but it was just chopping cooking the quinoa. I mixed all the ingredients together while I stuck the pot of quinoa in the garage to cool down. Looks good already!

The salad, before adding the quinoa. Looks colourful and tasty!

I was impatient, it was 6pm and the quinoa was taking forever to cool down even in a -10 degrees garage. I transfered it to a bowl and stirred it a few times, finally got it to luke warm temperature. So I got a bed of spinach down on the plates, sliced some lemon, got the sprigs of parsley out, and then mixed the quinoa. Just for effect, packed it in a bowl to shape it like they did in the recipe. And WOW was it delish! I think SSO hated it as much as we liked it. Well, he's nine so what do you expect.

Avocado Salad with Quinoa

Next Time: nothing

Me: 10/10
SO: 10/10
SSO: 1/10

Pan-fried salmon with chickpea salad

There are lots of reasons why I really like this recipe - salmon is so delish, the whole thing is done in 15 minutes flat, and it is super healthy. There is nothing unhealthy about it. I think we came across this (or something like this) in a Weight Watchers book, but darned if I can find it again. In any case, it is something we go back to every once in a while and once we do, we wonder why we don't have it more often.

Pan-fried Salmon with Chickpea salad

A lot of people are not crazy about chickpeas, but they are low in fat and high in fiber. Add a bit of curry powder and you have a spicy and good for you salad.
Some crazy facts:

• India of course produces by far the most, but second place in production is....Australia
• Hummous, the middle-eastern staple, is actually the Arabic word for Chickpea, and is not just the name of the dip made with tahini
• The chickpea was cultivated as early as 7500 years ago!
• Other names you may recognize are Garbanzo beans, and channa (from the Indian buffet table)

Next Time: may try switching up the ingredients of the salad

Me: 8/10

SO: 10/10

SSO: 4/10