QUINOA SALAD-Just a quick post today. Cooking has been a big part of my life. I love talking food. I live on a low carb diet because of diabetes and so I can only have small amounts of grain. My daughter was suggesting I try quinoa because it is low carb for a grain. So I looked up some recipes and found one with feta cheese, tomatoes, onions and arugula. I don't really use recipes but use them for inspiration. Anyway I made a few changes, I added pine nuts to mine. It was really good. It reminds me of couscous because it's kind of light and fluffy. The recipe was copyrighted so I don't feel I can give it to you, but I would just say any rice salad recipe could be used, just substitute the quinoa.

I saw many ways to cook the quinoa itself and chose the simplest just add quinoa to water, 2 parts water to 1 part quinoa, bring to a boil, cover and turn down to a simmer for 15 mins. Keep an eye on it because mine had no water left 6 mins. before it was suppose to be done. I just turned off the heat and let it steam for the 6 mins. and it was fine. I think any raw veggies that you might put in a chopped salad would be good additions to the grain and the dressing is a simple vinegrette. I want to try the quinoa warm with sauted veggies next. I did a google search on quinoa salad and found lots of version but what I like about this one is it was so simple and didn't have a lot of ingredients which makes it frugal.