With recipes like the one I made this week, I’m starting to enjoy making salads. Once again I must thank Pinterest for bringing this quinoa salad recipe to my attention. It comes from the site Small Kitchen College, which is a great site for college-aged people who are faced with the challenge of cooking in small or non-existent kitchen spaces. This site would have been fabulous back in my college days!
What really drew me to this dish was the fact that it was a quinoa salad but it also included lettuce. I’m not a huge fan of lettuce and I thought that perhaps the addition of quinoa (along with other great salad ingredients – I’ll get to those in a moment) would actually get me to eat lettuce…I am happy to announce that this was the case.
The base of the dish is a lettuce-based salad full of veggies with an olive oil and lemon juice vinaigrette. The vegetables I used added a Mediterranean (mainly Greek) flavor to the salad: grape tomatoes, red onions, artichoke hearts (no brainer), Kalamata olives, parsley and basil (!!!). Then the cooked quinoa, Feta cheese, and freshly ground black pepper are added to the salad and mixed thoroughly.
This salad is fresh and has a bright taste to it (thanks to the ingredients and simple dressing) that is perfect for a warm spring or summer day. I have to warn you that it makes a large amount of food, but it’s so delicious that I know you won’t have a problem enjoying the leftovers.
If you aren’t very familiar with quinoa, don’t let that stop you from enjoying this delicious dish. It’s one of my favorite healthy foods to eat because it is so versatile. If you’re looking for other great quinoa dishes, check out these recipes that I’ve featured over the past year:
I first introduced quinoa on my blog with this fabulous Quinoa Salad with Black Beans, Avocado and Cumin-Lime Dressing that makes my mouth (and anyone else who has tasted it) water. Quinoa can be a great compliment to a dish, such as when I used it as a bed for my Oregano Brussels Sprouts that were delightful. But don’t forget my most recent week where I featured fun ways to cook with quinoa in a Cheesy Quinoa Cake with a spicy aioli and also a delicious and inventive Lemon Blueberry Quinoa Pancakes recipe. I cannot wait to find more delicious ways to eat quinoa.
Click here for this uber yummy salad and step by step instructions.
What I was cooking up a year ago: Cooking with Rhubarb!
I loved eating rhubarb as a kid and couldn’t wait to find some fun rhubarb recipes to make myself. Between the whole wheat rhubarb streusel muffins, strawberry and rhubarb risotto, and roasted vanilla rhubarb, I would say I definitely succeeded in my challenge last year. And now I’m craving those sweet and tangy muffins again! 🙂
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