Quinoa, the other grain

Dear loyal readers,

Yes, there are many more things going on than I want to discuss, if you want a glimpse of them, read my other blog...but for now I want to write about quinoa.

When I first saw this grain in print, I thought it was pronounced kin-oh-ah. I was mistaken, it's pronounced keen-wah. And despite the initial pronunciation issues, the more I try it and and the better I get to know this little round nutritional marvel (it's the grain with the most protein!), the more I like it.

I found this recipe for Spinach Quinoa salad with cherries and almonds a couple weeks ago when I added myself to the Vegetarian Times mailing list. I made it while procrastinating one Friday afternoon and fell (almost) in culinary love.

Read the recipe first, as I'm not going to reprint it here just in case there are copyrights that will chop off all my hair as a penalty. But here are my mods:

Almonds: I used slivered, toasted, and found it's best if you add right before eating as soggy refrigerated almonds are not so fun.
Cherries: use dried ones, the texture works well
Chickpeas: if you like them, follow the recipe, if you don't (like me) leave them out - nothing is lost
Garlic: use one medium sized clove unless you want to kill your tastebuds softly with garlic
Quinoa: I used 1 cup quinoa and 1/2 cup millet because that's what I had - worked fine.

Other than that, I followed the recipe and would again. Yum! I ate this for days and never tired of it.

Then a week later I wanted to make it again, so I got around to cooking the quinoa and didn't make the salad. Now I've been having fun mixing the cooked quinoa with other ingredients, like for lunch today and I made what can only be called a Veggie Quinoa stir fry.

Here's what I did:
sauteed a bunch of sliced mushrooms in garlic and butter
added two handfuls of baby spinach and sauteed them
found some leftover sliced steamed red potatoes in the fridge and added them
then added about a cup of cooked quinoa and stirred up until everything was warm.

I've got to say...it's quite good! The bonus being that it's wheat free and dairy free! How did I manage that???