I first heard of quinoa when I was watching the fast-food focused documentary Super Size Me. Morgan Spurlock was about to go on his mission of eating McDonalds 3 meals a day for a month, and his health-food obsessed vegan girlfriend made him his “last meal” – I think it was roasted vegetable and quinoa salad. Of course, I was like, what the heck is that? But, since then, I’ve been hearing about how good for you it is and how much protein it has.
So, when we found some in the bargain bin at the local Harris Teeter, we decided to give it a try. Rather than cook it plain (which I knew.. would probably be boring), I found this Quinoa salad with grapefruit recipe. Mostly I chose this recipe over any others because we had 2 grapefruits sitting in the fridge. Despite the fact that we didn’t have green onions OR cilantro, it turned out really tasty. It’s a lot like cous cous but has a slightly creamier texture. That could be because you make a grapefruit-infused olive oil dressing that you mix into the salad. Most of the recipes I found actually treated it like couscous, by putting raisins and other nuts in the mix. The grapefruit made it interesting, almost something you could eat for breakfast like a bowl of cereal. (Minus the salmon. Then again, I didn’t make that part of the recipe at all – I do not like salmon!). I had it for a side dish with my lunch.
Does this make up for the fact that I ate a brownie for breakfast?
Follow-up on 9/4: Did anyone watch that Food Network special for the South Beach Food and Wine Festival?? Well, anyway, a bunch of chefs from the network were on there doing demonstrations of different recipes. Emeril, inspired by his new “Spa menu” at his hotel restaurant in South Beach, made QUINOA! What the heck was this about…. Is it just me or has Emeril totally sold out?? No chicken fat? No pork belly? It’s like Paula Deen saying that she’s not going to deep fry things any more.
This weekend, the NextStep group went on a wafting excursion with our friendly Eno River naturalist, River Dave. It was fun. We had little inflatable kayaks that held two people. Since the Eno is so calm, only one paddle per waft was needed.. which meant I spent a fair amount of time chilling in the waft. Sweeeet.
We learned a bunch of stuff about nature. For example, did you know that the cosmic tree for the United States is the Elm tree? We took a moment to sit under the tree and listen to nature – which was mostly cicadas up in the trees. You’re supposed to go sit under a cosmic tree whenever you are looking for guidance or relaxation. Apparently if you ask a question while you’re under the tree, you’ll have a dream that night that will tell you the answer to your question. Also you can go to the cosmic tree to celebrate life occasions like anniversaries, engagements, and weddings. I couldn’t find anything on cosmic trees on the internet, so I’m not sure of the other cosmic tree meanings.
Oak made a grand announcement that our cosmic tree is not an Elm, but the Oak tree. Obviously! I guess, the cosmic tree can be whatever tree you choose. Of course that’s appropriate for us!
Midway through our excursion we stopped at the “Triangle’s best swimmin’ hole.” It was very refreshing. On the way back, Oak checked out a rope swing and a bunch of people took turns going off of it into the water. I manned our waft.
After our nice morning, we went to LeCoco restaurant / Eno River Eatery for lunch. Apparently this place is having an identity crisis… the outside says LeCoco, but the menu and website have the Eno River Eatery name. Everyone that got breakfast seemed to enjoy it, but Oak wasn’t happy with his sandwich. This just goes that when you’re in a diner, you’ve got to get the breakfast food.
In other news: my digital camera seems to be broken, so I won’t have any pictures for awhile. Boohoo!! 
We’ll be shopping for a new one soon enough.
Man, I don’t know what’s been going on lately but I sure haven’t gotten to updating the site. The first weekend in August, we had a great weekend with Mom and Dave at Oak Island. First of all, Oak enjoyed it because he was pretending that we were on “his island” all weekend. Haha.
The highlight of the weekend was that we had some jetskis that we went out on twice! Here’s mom, and me… both “wide open” all on our own!! Aren’t we a pair of speed demons!!! It was so much fun we barely noticed the bumps and bruises that we got!! I had 
bruises all over my knees from getting back on the jetski – it’s definitely easy to fall off, especially when 2 people are on at the same time. (Like Oak isn’t a crazy enough driver on land!! Just imagine!)
We also made a trip to visit the Oak Island lighthouse, and Oak cooked up a bunch of seafoood for a few of our meals.. we had clams, shrimp and scallops! Yummy. Of course, some Upwords was also played. We forgot to bring a dictionary though… whoops. We meant to play some mini-golf but ran out of time! 3 days is just not enough! We’ll have to go back again soon!
Well, I was hoping to wait and post about our adventure to Oak Island once I took the pictures off of our camera. Well, you’ll just have to wait to see that post and those pictures until I get my lazy butt moving on that one.
Ah yes, the weekend. We stayed at home and finally went to Piedmont for brunch after our required visit to the Durham Farmers Market. I got the Eggs Piedmont (their version of Eggs Benedict, with pancetta and roasted-tomato hollandaise), and Oak got the Croque Madame. Oak’s sandwich was the clear winner. The only thing we were confused about is why the egg was served on top of the sandwich. Does that mean you’re supposed to eat it with a fork and knife? I told him just to stick the egg inside the sandwich, but my search on google shows an awful lot of croque madames with the egg on top, so I’m baffled. At least one other person I could find put the egg inside the sandwich! Clearly it’s just for presentation, right? Well maybe we committed a major faux-pas. I guess we’ll have to figure that out before we go visiting any Paris bistros. Anyway, the brunch was delicious. I topped it off with a bloody mary with an Okra pickle. Yummy!
Hopefully we’ll get to do this farmers market-brunch routine a few more times before the end of the summer. There’s also brunch at Alivia’s and Rue Cler that sound good.
