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.
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