We Survived the Quinoa!

Breakfast was a choice…Fage (Yum) or oatmeal (Yum)!  Oh I was tortured.  Finally the thought of Peanut Butter & Co. Dark Chocolate Dreams all chocolately and peanuty and melty and swirled in oatmeal with sliced bananas won out. 

This held me off until about 1 p.m., when all of a sudden I was ravenous!  I was working and had waited too long to eat and now I needed to eat…quickly!

I looked in the fridge and it was pretty bare….I hadn’t been to the store this week and I hadn’t picked up a produce box on Monday we were hurting!  But I knew I did want to clean out the fridge of what was left so I dragged out all the veggies I could find and made……….

Last Legs Salad!

That’s right…I pulled out all of the veggies on their last legs and put it into a salad which surprisingly enough ended up being absolutely awesome!

I had romaine (not my favorite but what I had), some red pepper, some daikon, julienned beets, and half a carrot.  I found a sweet potato that was seriously on its way out so I cut off the skin (bad spots!), chunked it up, and micro’d for a few minutes until tender (and perfect).  I also added 1 tsp sliced almonds, 1 TBS goat cheese, and 2 tsp raisins.

This ended up being absolutely incredible!  The sweet potatoes, raisins, and goat cheese turned the last legs veggies into perfection in a bowl.

I added on the side two lavosh crackers with 1/2 TBS of yummy homemade hummus spread on each.   And all of this filling, yummy, and healthiness for a mere 4.5 points! 

It is TOM and I was craving chocolate….so I had a couple of pieces  of this:

Now for the quinoa survival.   I found a yummy-looking recipe on one of my favorite websites, Oh She Glows, but I didn’t have have the ingredients…and had a whole bunch of other ingredients that needed to be used up…so usinng it as a base, I modified to my hearts (and fridge’s) content!

First, the quinoa……in a fit of complete paranoia, I rinsed this stuff to within in inch of its life!

First in the strainer, under running water, f or a good 5 full minutes:

Then, after all of that rinsing, I was still nervous so I dumped it into a bowl, filled the bowl with water, and stirred like crazy to make sure I got rid of all of those evil saponins.  Yes….I was am paranoid.  I dumped it back into the strainer to drain and then into the pot.  I wasn’t satisfied until we had made it through the night…with no events!

Along with the scary quinoa I made a curry sauce.  I didn’t have mixed veggies to add…but I diced up the rest of the sweet potato that had bad spots (I viciously cut out the bad spots…I am paranoid about potatoes too!) and added frozen sweet peas to the curry sauce. 

I also chopped up onion, garlic, mushrooms, and broccoli which I figured would either go in the curry or on the side.

I think most of the rest of the recipe was true….although I wouldn’t bet my life on it!  I added the onions, the chopped garlic, and extra cumin and turmeric.  I also had veggie broth and lite coconut milk.  This came out fantastic and was the perfect topping for the very very very well-rinsed quinoa!

The broccoli and organic mushrooms that really needed to be used up, I decided to stir-fry them with some  garlic and a little canola oil…

I mixed it right into my curry while the rest of the family ate it as a side.

  The final results, above, was really good and filling.   The rest of the family complained it was missing some chicken.  But I think they are getting used to this!  Haha!