Quinoa Again

Remember my post soliciting quinoa recipes a long while back? Well, my sister and her husband remembered that I'd been in need of some and gave me Quinoa 365 for Christmas. Last year we got a cookbook full of vegetarian recipes from another sister, which turned out to have many delicious and easy/quick recipes in it. This cookbook has so far proven equally successful (good job, siblings, on purchasing great cookbooks for us!)

I honestly had to limit myself when making up this month's menu, or else half of it would have been dishes from this cookbook. There are several great things about this that make it a useful book to have: several dishes have quinoa as their main ingredient, several dishes have quinoa as a secondary ingredient rather than a main ingredient, they have recipes in the back for baby food using quinoa (seriously, how awesome is that?!), they have some amazing looking desserts that use quinoa, some of which are gluten-free (I've become more aware of this as a couple parents in the preschool and Gareth's preschool teacher all eat gluten-free), and all the recipes I've tried so far are tasty and quick/easy.

This month we're trying three dinner dishes and a couple of breakfast dishes (on our weekend breakfasts). So far we've had Leek and Potato Soup (soups with milk in them often make my stomach very unhappy - this one didn't!), Black Bean Soup (I did have to increase the amount of liquid called for in this one, but it was easily done at the end and everything still tasted delicious), and Apple Strudel Cereal. Ryan and I liked the breakfast cereal, Gareth not so much. It is a little strange at first to be eating quinoa for breakfast, but after a few bites I got used to it and it was very tasty - basically just quinoa with raisins and dried apples and cinnamon mixed in while the quinoa cooks. Then once it's done you throw in some vanilla and a tiny bit of brown sugar if you want. Serve it with yogurt (I used Greek honey yogurt, Ryan tried the leftovers with plain yogurt) and toasted almonds on top. A great thing about eating quinoa for breakfast is that it keeps you full much longer than many other breakfast foods. I think we're going to be going through a lot of quinoa in the next few months...

On a less healthy note, if you want some delicious-looking recipes that are far more fattening, check out the "Daily Indulgence" at myrecipes.com. Not all of them are desserts, but most are. And most of them are very tempting. Good thing I don't usually have time to make dessert!