Quinoa Almond Berry Salad

Recipe and picture (shockingly, hers looks WAY better than my phone pics) from Oh She Glows. She is vegan, but her recipes, like this one, usually look freaking fantastic for anyone and everyone. They never have creepy stuff like fake cheese or fake meat or any of that crap in them. Only fresh "real" ingredients. As a meat eater, I'm always bookmarking or pinning her recipes as side dishes or appetizers. Good stuff.

Yield: 2-3 as a main, 4-6 as a side.

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup dry quinoa
• 1 pint strawberries, sliced (2.5-3 cups)
• 16 oz. fresh blueberries (1.5-2 cups)
• 1 cup cherries, pitted and sliced
• 2 tbsp pure maple syrup (or other liquid sweetener)
• 1 tsp balsamic vinegar
• 1 tbsp fresh lime juice (or lemon might work!)
• Pinch of kosher salt
• 1/2 cup almonds, chopped

Directions:

1. Cook quinoa according to package directions. (usually 1 part quinoa to 1.5 parts water)

2. Meanwhile, chop the fruit and place in a large bowl.

3. Mix the dressing ingredients (maple syrup, balsamic, lime juice, salt) in a small jar and adjust to taste if necessary. Note: You may have to double the dressing recipe if your salad is quite large. (I made about 1.5x the dressing recipe and it seemed perfect)

4. Fluff cooked quinoa with a fork (I did this for a few minutes to cool it off before adding it to the fruit) and add to large bowl with fruit. Combine. Pour on dressing and mix well. Serve immediately or chill in the fridge until serving time. (I chilled it a bit, thinking that it would be good for the grains and fruit to soak up the dressing. I added the almonds just before serving.)

I went to the farmer's market yesterday morning and picked up super fresh and ripe berries. Is there anything better than perfectly ripe berries? No. No there isn't. This was super easy to make, although pitting and chopping cherries is a gd CHORE. There aren't THAT many in the recipe, though. I made this with goat cheese stuffed turkey burgers for a father daughter dinner with my pops. I was pretty sure that the burgers were a disaster, so I served it all "sorry about the horrifying looking burgers, but the berry thing will be amazing! So that's something! Right?!". Surprisingly, I'm not known as the cook of the family. Anyway, this is uber healthy, as quinoa is one of the only grains that provides a complete protein (although not a ton of it), berries are stock full of antioxidants, and almonds provide a nice healthy fat source and all that jazz. I'm totally excited to eat leftovers today. Not gonna lie. 

Smoothies!

I just got a new blender, y'all!!! Yes, it's pink. No, that was not my preferred color. But we all know that I'm a huge giant sucker for a good sale.

Due to a lovely spout with reeeeeally bad TMJ lately, it came at a great time. Soups and smoothies are about to rule my life! I made a smoothie for dinner tonight, out of pure excitement. Might whip up some carrot soup a little later.

My take on smoothies:

-Fruit+fruit juice=a TON of sugar.

-Smoothies need not be huge Jamba Juiced sized. Seriously. Yes, fruit has a ton of vitamins and even though it's "natural" sugar, it also has a ton of sugar and SUGAR IS SUGAR. Your smoothie really shouldn't be more than about a cup. Edit: not more than a cup of fruit, I should say. I just added a bunch of extra almond milk and a hand full of spinach to my regular small smoothie and it got HUGE!

-instead of juice, try kefir, almond/soy milk, milk, or sub half the juice with yogurt. Really try to cut the sugar out by not using juice. If you're going to use juice at all (like, at all IN YOUR LIFE), try to get it as close to it's natural state as possible. Apple juice from concentrate? Pretty much just straight sugar.

-Add stuff!! I like adding almonds. Little protein and makes it more filling. Maybe add some dry oatmeal for fiber, or protein powder, or "green" powder, tofu for protein. You can disguise the taste of all kinds of good-for-you crap in smoothies.

-My trick I picked up working at a cafe place that had smoothies: take a cup the size of the smoothie you want. Fill it with the frozen fruit. THEN fill it with whatever liquid you're using until it just tops the fruit. The fruit/liquid ratio is pretty spot on that way. Not too thick, not too runny.

I'm considering playing with veggie drinks at some point next...sounds like it has the potential of being gross, though...we'll see.

Edit: I came across this last night. Almond butter! Of COURSE!! I love almond butter. It's a little pricey but SO good and totally better for you than peanut butter. I made that recipe with almond milk (super low calorie and nice nutty flavor) and mixed berries (on sale for $7 for a giant bag at Target). KEEPER. I could totally taste the almond butter. I usually just put whole almond in it. I like the crunchiness of that, but the almond butter flavor is a lot stronger. I'm sure my neighbors love hearing my blender scream at 6am every day now. Sorry for partying.

Edit pt2: Added a big handfull of fresh spinach to the smoothie just above. Can't even taste it! At all! Killer way to sneak in greens. For big people AND little people!

Edit pt 3: To mix things up (I love trying to fix things that aren't broken, apparently), I bought a carton of the SoDelicious non-sweetened coconut milk (like a milk carton, got it at Target). It's low calorie and I thought maybe it would add a naturally sweet coconut-y flair. IT DOESN'T. It's gross. It's almost...bitter. And yucks up the taste of the whole smoothie. Stick to almond milk, people. Trust.

Brussel Sprouts and Tofu and Pomelo, oh my!

Ok. The dinner that I made myself last night might forever strip me of my title as a fat ass. For real. I had wanted to make the two things separately and only when I said it out loud did I realize how horrifyingly healthy/hippy it sounds. Damn it. As I was cooking it I was thinking "WTF am I doing?! Eating this stupid bird food is only going to leave me starving in about a half hour!". Much to my amazement, though, it was TOTALLY filling. Weird. Maybe those stupid hippies are onto something...

BRUSSEL SPROUTS
On a recent trip to Nevada City with my best friend Susannah and her parents, her mom made brussel sprouts. I hadn't had them in forever and forgot how much I like them! When I saw a pile of them at the farmer's market this weekend, I decided to attempt to make them myself. The ones I got were a smidge pricey, but I didn't really look around for the cheapest, so I might have just jipped myself.

-Olive oil (couple tablespoons-ish)
-3-ish cloves of crushed garlic
-some brussel sprouts (doing great with the measurements with this one, huh?)
-S&P

Peel a couple layers off each brussel sprout (the dirty yucky looking layers), cut the stems off and cut them in half. I was told that cutting them in half is optional but that they cook better that way.

Heat up a frying pan with the oil with medium heat, add the garlic. Saute the garlic until it's soft but not brown (I failed at this step. Stupid garlic is tough to get right!). Add the brussel sprouts and saute until nice and browned (hey I did that! "browning" or "cook until a nice crust is formed" never seems to work for me, as evidenced below).

When they're nice and brown, but still undercooked, add in enough water to cover the bottom of the dish and come up to maybe half the height of the brussel sprouts. Don't want to drown them OR burn your pan up when you run out of water. Throw in a sprinkle of salt too, to taste. Cover the pan and steam for about 10 mins. In Nevada City it took a bit longer, and 10 mins seemed a bit much for mine, so just keep an eye on them. When a fork can go through the biggest easily, they're done! Drain the excess water and voila!


Grilled Tofu
Next up: tofu! Typically speaking, I'm not a fan. It tastes like NOTHING. I add it to soups and smoothies because it's good for you and tasteless, but I rarely eat it as it's own dish. I was flipping through Isabel's Cantina, though, and it seemed like a super fast super cheap dish so I decided to go for it. This is kind of a bastardized version of the recipe in the book though, so keep that in mind.

Olive oil
1 container of super firm tofu, cut into 1in cubes (I'd go a little smaller to decrease the plain to spiced tofu ratio)
1/2 teas cumin
1/2 teas ground red pepper (or chili pepper or whatever that red stuff is)

After the tofu is cut, dry it out some with a paper towel. Toss it in a bowl with the spices so that all the pieces are evenly coated (Note: don't absentmindedly lick your fingers while handling ground chili covered things unless you want to scrub your tongue with a paper towel and cough for a half hour. I've heard it sucks). Heat a couple Tablespoons of olive oil over pretty high heat and throw the tofu in. The recipe says to turn as needed, cooking until each side is nice and crusty. Umm...mine didn't really get crusty. Heat might not have been high enough or something. The end result was edible, but I'm gonna try to find something a little more convincing next time. The 'crusty-ness' probably would've helped. I'll have to work on that...I feel like tofu needs to be marinated in beef fat or something to make it actually good...you know?

Pomelo
One of my roommates in San Diego introduced me to Pomelo's. It's like a giant sweet grapefruit. So good! Usually giant versions of regular sized things (ie: koi fish) totally freak me out because they look all steroided and crap, but not these. They're kind of a pain in the ass to eat, but totally worth it. The outside looks like a huge green grapefruit. There is a ton of rind, so I'd avoid paying per pound because only about half of it is actually fruit.

Cut both ends off until you see the pink fruit part. Then cut it in wedges. It's easier to eat if you try to cut close to wedges/skin. When you pull each side of the wedge down, like you would an orange, the fruit part just kind of pops out. The skin is SUPER tough, so I wouldn't recommend trying to eat it.