Mind in the Gutter

Nathan was kind enough to cook dinner this night. I do love how he puts in the effort to make his dishes presentable, but I was a bit hesitant to post this one up, mostly because my mind is in the gutter 24/7 and I can't get away from how vaginal his presentation came out. Heehee. Now I will talk about the food.

Suffice to say, it was delicious. We've been really into red quinoa ever since we tried it in this, so we decided to make a salad with it. We decided, but Nathan ended up doing all of the work. I don't even remember all of the goodies that were in this dish (other than what you see in the pic), but mixed all together we had an incredibly scrumptious and healthy meal, if also vaginal. *Giggle*

For dessert, Nathan shined again. He's got a lot of delicious tricks up his sleeves, and tonight he brought out a family favorite - Baked Apples!! Again, I'm not sure what all he put in the apple, but I know that he cored it up and stuffed it with cinnamon, cloves and other yummy spices.

All in all a very comforting meal, especially since it was not made by me.

Healthy and Delicious

My parents were in town this weekend. Since I’ve been living in Texas, they’ve come down to Austin from Huntsville (a three-hour drive…a three-hour drive…heehee) EVERY weekend. And, I’ll tell the truth, it’s actually kind of nice. I haven’t lived near my parents in almost 7 years, and I missed them. They are very nice people. I like having them around. So there.

There are a lot of superficial differences between my family and me, one of those differences being what we eat. And this doesn’t usually bother me so much; I tend to be un-involved in others’ choices of what they choose to eat. Irrational food-prejudices annoy me, but I don’t really care when someone wants to eat a ton of meat in front of me, especially if it’s tasty. I am a big advocate of taste. Still, I guess in general I do enjoy sharing healthy AND delicious food; some people really don’t think healthy food can be tasty, and they need the enlightenment. So that’s one of my goals in living near my family. I want to influence the way they eat, at least a little. They don’t have a ton of healthy influences in their lives, and why not bring a little Portland food love to Huntsville, Texas?

Anyways, I know they like my cooking – at least, they are very convincing in their “Mmm’s.”

I wanted to cook something nice for my parents, but also easy. Usually that means I’m making a quinoa salad. Quinoa is one of my favorite grains ever (did you know it’s actually a seed? Hmm.), and I was intrigued by the following recipe because it uses red quinoa. I had never had red quinoa before, and I liked all of the other ingredients (avocados!!! cherry tomatoes!! avocados!!!), so I gave it a try. I found the recipe online, from the blog, AlmostFit. I pasted the recipe below, and put in parentheses my little changes.

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Ingredients

1 cup uncooked red quinoa
2 cups water
2 cups cherry tomatoes, halved
2 avocados, diced
1 cup artichoke hearts
1/4 cup chopped fresh basil
2 tablespoons of pine nuts, toasted (I used walnuts instead)
2 tablespoons of capers, to taste (Did not use capers)

Caramelized onions:
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 thinly sliced red onion

Basic vinaigrette dressing:
3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons fresh lemon or lime juice, with zest
2 cloves minced garlic
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

Serves 4-6 as a side dish

Bring the quinoa and water to boil. When the water boils, reduce the heat to a simmer and cook until the water is absorbed, approximately 10 minutes. When cooked, quinoa has a texture similar to perfectly cooked pasta, or rice. Strain and rinse well under cold water.

While the quinoa is cooking, in a skillet heat olive oil over medium heat and saute the onions until transparent.

Prepare the vinaigrette by combining the ingredients and whisking.

In a large salad bowl, toss all of the ingredients together, including caramelized onions and the vinaigrette.

Serve cold or at room temperature.
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This meal was SUPER easy to make and effin’ DELICIOUS. Seriously. I have been missing out. Nathan thought it was the best quinoa salad I’d made (better than the quinoa paella? No way; that’s just crazy talk), but I think that was the just the out-of-detox-everything-tastes-amazing talking. In any case, it was tasty, if not also a liiittle too oily. Also, we had Nut Thins as a gluten-free accompaniment to the salad, along with some steamed kale with lemon juice. Yum. I felt great.