Quinoa and everything else

This post is for Julia because I finally made quinoa and have included instructions below. Quinoa is one of my favorite dishes because it's fast and easy. Before that though I made a delicious polenta and steamed veggies dish with a side of black eyed peas seasoned with miso. (Ok, technically Dandelion the Bitter Green made the polenta because he is better at polenta than I am. I have a quick cook method that does not pass muster with the Dandelion.)



The next night we ate leftovers. The day after that we made soup. Here is the pre-soup ingredients: mushrooms, carrots, burdock, and parsley. Plus some heirloom Anasazi beans.



And the excessive vegan cupcakes made by the Cheerful Baker from recipes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World.



A simple dinner of brown rice with broccoli. Served with leftover soup.



And finally the quinoa dinner. Served with Anasazi beans and roasted kabocha slices. The quinoa also had carrots and bok choy tossed in while cooking.



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Quinoa:
The trick to quinoa is that you either have to wash it really, really well (and drain with a fine mesh strainer) or you can use my method which is easier. This is because quinoa has a natural coating which is kind of bitter and soapy tasting. Therefore you want to wash it well so that it tastes good instead. Or you can roast it in a pan before adding the water as described below.

Take one cup of quinoa, heat up some oil in a skillet pan (or a frying pan with deep sides). If you want you can cut up some garlic or onions and add them now. Let them get nice and brown.
Then add the quinoa. Let it roast in the pan (stirring frequently) until it starts to pop and smells toasted (1-2 min). Once it reaches that magic toasted point you can put in the water (or stock), usually 2 cups. Stir it up, cover the pan and let simmer, checking occasionally, for about 15 minutes or until all the liquid is absorbed. Towards the middle of that cooking time you can add veggies or beans to the quinoa to make an awesome one-pot meal. I like this method because then there are fewer pots to clean. This makes enough for about 3-4 people, depending on what else you are serving with it.
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Pasta night, made entirely by Dandelion the Bitter Green because I had a bike accident that evening and didn't feel up to cooking.



Tonight: Roasted broccoli and sweet potatoes with brown rice and lentils.

In the news

I'm sure some of you have seen this already but I found it rather fascinating. A NY Times op-ed piece by a farmer in Iowa, I think, talking about how hard it is for him to simply grow organic fruits and vegetables. Thanks to our subsidy of other commodity crops he actually had to pay a fine for growing food. Local, organic food! This is what people will pay ridiculous amounts of money for at their local Whole Foods, though admittedly Whole Foods may not be pushing actual locally grown produce. Instead the majority is grown by the Big Organic (as Michael Pollan calls them) companies in California. Even out here where the growing season is optimal and the hippie farmer markets ubiquitous it's hard to find actual local, organic produce. Thanks to our weird and twisted laws that help someone who is growing mono-cultures of something we put in our cars. Since when does gas count as food?

And did anyone else see this almost hysterical article about vegetarianism from a Russian newspaper? I think the title was "Vegetarianism proves to be perversion of nature". Wow! I knew I was perverted but didn't think it was because I ate vegetables. Reading this is like being transported back to the 1950s, when eating the roast after church on Sunday was just what you did and no one else did different. I mean, this article actually claims that vegetarians are wasting away with dystrophy, heart disease, and spindly weak legs and arms. If it weren't so ludicrous it would be funny. It's a little scary though that there are still places in the world where vegetarianism is not ok, let alone something out there like vegan-ism or macrobiotic-ism.

In other news, I made a split pea soup in our new pressure cooker. I'll have to post pictures of that soon. As well as steamed broccoli with a miso/ tahini/ lemon juice sauce and quinoa. I have learned the secret to making great quinoa. Take a skillet and heat up some oil and then brown some onions. Once the onions are on their way, add the amount of quinoa you want to use and saute it before you add any water. This cooks off the crazy toxic layer that surrounds the quinoa grains without subjecting you to many, many rinses. If you make quinoa the normal way (similar to how you might make rice) you have to wash it, and wash it, and wash it with a really fine mesh strainer to get rid of that waxy layer. This way you don't have to, i.e. faster, and it tastes great!