added this 18 years ago
Super Easy Quinoa Salad
What you need:
1 cup cooked quinoa
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup dried cherries
1/2 cup raisins
a handful of flaxseeds
a handful of salted sunflower seeds
a handful of slivered almonds
a few tablespoons of your favorite low-fat raspberry vinaigrette (Annies is excellent)
salt/pepper to taste
What you do:
This is a really easy recipe. All of the ingredients can be adjusted to your own personal taste. Its just something I came up with when I had leftover quinoa from making stuffed peppers. Mix the dried fruit in with the quinoa and then mix in the nuts and seeds. Mix in the vinaigrette -- not too much -- and let it sit in the fridge for a few minutes (30 to 1 hour). Enjoy! I eat this for breakfast a lot.
Preparation Time:
10 minutes
Cooking Time:
Servings:
6
Recipe Category:
SO HOW'D IT GO?
I didn't have almonds or sunflower seeds, but pepitas were a nice addition for a salty/sweet touch. I thought about adding blueberries too, but it might be too much berry in the dish.
I also did not have any raspberry vinaigrette, but instead topped it with a little black currant cordial. Delicious! ;)b
This is good, but very sweet to me. I think all the dried fruit spiked my blood sugar. However, I'm not much of a sweet tooth (partially b/c I think my blood sugar spikes so easily). So, it's also worth mentioning that DH (the incurable sweet tooth) DOWNED about three servings and was scraping the bowl... and this was his first experience with quinoa!
Possible suggestion to adapt for other non-sweet tooths like me: for breakfast today I remembered this recipe and adapted it--added sunflower seeds (would have added almonds had I had them) and banana slices to the quinoa and topped with Drew's raspberry vinaigrette. This was totally based on what I had in the house, but I think the experimentation with fresh fruits might be useful. Plus it made for such a satisfying and balanced breakfast!
This was a hit as a side at dinner last night! So light and yummy! I added dried cranberries, raisins, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds and slivered almonds to the cooked quinoa, plus 2 tablespoons of low fat raspberry dressing and it was fantastic. I really didn't measure all the add-ins, I just eyeballed it and added as much as it needed! My friends want to make this all the time now!