Red Quinoa and Rice Patty

So simple quinoa patty

I almost always cook quinoa together with another grain in my rice cooker, not sure why but I like the combinations.
 First day:  red quinoa, white rice, celery, onion, and some Mediterranean spices.
I just mixed it with greens and that's it.
Second day:  added some homemade bread crumbs, and an egg, cooked patties in some canola oil
Best eaten fresh, hot and crispy but ...
Third day:  ate the last patty with fruit for lunch - still very good!

Welcome, Dawn!!

The title, "Welcome, Dawn!!" sounds like new beginnings, a new day, right?  It also expresses my happiness at introducing my very good friend Dawn to this blog.  She has recently adopted the Nutritarian style of eating and  I asked her if she would help with the blog.  She's a great cook and artist so we intend to have fun with this!

Dawn was visiting this weekend and our breakfast this morning was a simple combination of bulgur wheat and quinoa cooked in a rice cooker together.  I chopped up an apple and heated it up with some fresh (or frozen) whole cranberries and a pinch of fresh grated nutmeg, cinnamon, and brown sugar.  This made a great topping for the grains.  Next time I'll probably add walnut pieces and almond milk.  Yummy and quick!

Cranberry Apple cereal topping

         Tip:  make more grains than you need for one meal and use the leftovers for another.  Save 15-20 min.

Quick Main Dish

With fresh green beans and some leftover quinoa I set out to make some soup and thought this one came out pretty good.

Bring to a boil in a 2qt saucepan:
 4c cut up fresh green beans, 1/2 c cut up celery, a large chopped onion and 3-4c water

Lower heat, add seasonings and simmer 30 minutes:
 2T Tamari, 1tsp dried basil, 1 clove garlic, 1/2 tsp celery seed, fresh ground black pepper

Add 1c. cooked quinoa

Enjoy.

Silk Surprise

It's my day off.  I didn't want the same old hurried oatmeal or tea and toast I have on many work days.  I wanted a smoothie for breakfast and I was thinking decadent but nutritarian.  This is what I ended up with:

Combine in a blender:

12 oz Lite Chocolate Silk (soy milk)
1/2 c. cooked quinoa
1/2 c. blueberries
1/2 c. ice
I was resigned to eating it whether it was good or not and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was delicious!  I sipped it as I read my emails this morning and fully enjoyed my breakfast.





While I'm on the subject of Silk Lite Chocolate here's a favorite late night treat:  Mexican hot chocolate: 
 Start with Silk Lite chocolate soy milk and add some cinnamon, vanilla, and a tiny bit of cayenne pepper.  Heat in a mug in the microwave.  Yumm.

Quinoa Apple Smoothie

Photo M Wild Hansen
The color comes from cinnamon and red apple peel.  Yumm!

I really just wanted to publish this smoothie idea but felt I needed to give credit to Paulina Vásquez from Bolivia and call attention to her circumstances as well.
  From the NYTimes article:

" Paulina Vásquez, 52, a housekeeper and mother of three children in their 20s who live with her in a poor district on a steep mountainside of La Paz, sows the crop each year on her family’s land outside the city. The packaged quinoa found in supermarkets is beyond what her family can afford.

quinoa preparation process

Instead, they harvest their own, store it and then prepare it by hand, a painstaking process that includes washing away the resinlike saponin coating that protects the seeds. Sra. Vásquez regularly prepares a sweet drink of quinoa, apple, cinnamon and sugar for her family for breakfast.

But she says many in the younger generation have moved away from it. “People my age and older are eating quinoa,” Ms. Vásquez said. “The young people don’t want it. If there is a pot of noodles everyone is there, as if noodles were nutritious. Even my children are that way.”

For the recipe:
 I used 1/2 c. cooked quinoa, 2 small cored red apples, 1 t. cinnamon, 1/2t. nutmeg
 Blend into a smoothie with a little soy milk 
 I thought it was delicious without sweetening but you could add a little maple syrup.

 Also see Quinoa Quandary

Quinoa Quandary

women weighing quinoa at a market in Bolivia 

The irony of it all.  Bolivians and other Andes South Americans have been thriving on quinoa for centuries(dating back to the Incas) but now that it's becoming a popular food worldwide for it's complete set of amino acids (complete protein) as well as many other vital nutrients it has become unaffordable to many of those same Andean people.

a chinopod (like beets and spinach), quinoa is a seed, not a grain

I first heard of quinoa about five years ago and used it mainly as a side dish or breakfast cereal until a few months ago when I "went nutritarian" and saw its value as a complete protein in main dishes.  It turned up in the United States decades ago when NASA found it was an ideal food for long term space missions.  Until recently I could only find it in health food stores but now it's available in my supermarket.  With this increase in demand many of the farmers' incomes have risen but they either can't afford quinoa at the new prices or their children prefer noodles or rice.   While quinoa prices tripled in the last five years Bolivia's consumption of it declined almost 35% in the same time period.  What a quandary - local farmers earn more but fewer Bolivians reap quinoa's nutritional benefits!  

Read the NYTimes.com article on this topic.