I got this recipe in my inbox today for a quinoa salad. It spoke to me, but a) I was missing some ingredients and b) I was too hungry to let the quinoa cool and become a salad. So that recipe link is there if you are curious about making a quinoa salad. 🙂

What I made, on the other hand, went something like this:

Quinoa with spinach & curry:

Toast 1c dry quinoa over medium heat until lightly browned (couple of minutes). Add 1 3/4c water, a couple of dashes of salt, and a tsp or two of curry powder. Bring to a boil, cover, simmer until water is absorbed and quinoa is translucent & fluffy (20min-ish). Dump half a bag of chopped frozen spinach in, mix well, cover until ready to serve, then stir again to break up any spinach clumps.

While the curry is cooking, I sautéed a bunch of vegetables, which I added to the pan as I sliced them so each has time to cook (in this order).

• Thinly sliced onions
• Mushrooms
• Zucchini
• Yellow squash

At the end I added some black beans to warm up with the vegetables for extra protein, plus a couple of dashes each of salt and curry powder. I would totally have put fresh garlic in there if I’d had any.

Tahini sauce:

3 tbsp tahini whisked with 2-3tsp curry powder, 1tsp maple syrup, dash of ginger, dash of salt light dash of cinnamon, 2 tbsp lemon juice. Whisk and add water until it transforms from a thick paste into an easily pourable liquid. I think mine about doubled in volume.

Assemble and top with a few crumbled pecans! (It definitely needed the texture change & nuttiness.) Not pictured: I topped the veggies with some roasted carrots (more accurately, microwaved “carrot fries” I make for my son). Added a nice zing of color & crunch.