Recipe of the week: Quinoa Salad

This weeks recipe is by far one of my most favourite new simple recipes. I will say beforehand to cook a batch of quinoa (which can be used for days for salads, or breakfast dishes). I didn't have any quinoa pre-cooked, so before dinner time came, and while I was reading blogs I cooked 

• 1 cup of quinoa
• 2 cups of water
• a splash of coconut oil
• Himalayan salt. 

It cooks just like rice if you've never cooked with it before, so it takes 20 minutes in a pot with a lid. Once its cooked I will take the lid off, and use a fork to fluff up the quinoa before I let it cool a bit with the lid off.

After reading my blogs for the day I took out a nice big salad bowl, and filled it half way with salad greens that I had in my fridge.

                  

Next I took out everything I wanted for the salad

• 4 radishes
• 3 inches of cucumber
• 1 handful of blueberries
• 5 slices of turkey bacon
• 1 cup of cooked quinoa
• Extra virgian olive oil
• Balsalmic vinegar
• Himalayan salt, and my pepper grinder for some fresh pepper 

                  

Mmm, my guilty pleasure- turkey bacon!

                 

Here's my cooled quinoa

                 

                  

Once I chopped up my veggies, and cooked bacon I added it all to the bowl of greens

                  

I don't really measure how much olive oil or balsalmic I use because you either like your salad really saucy, or a bit on the drier side, so I'll leave that to your discretion. 

Salt and pepper to taste.

Here's the final product! It was incredibly yummy, and when I served it to my son he had a great big smile on his face :)

Hope you enjoy! 

                 

Green Glow Smoothie

We are back for the next addition of Good Food Fridays, where I share not only time saving recipes, but healthy at that! 

I've been working on this one for a while now, so I hope you enjoy it- not only for the taste, but the amazing health benefits. There's a plethora of good fats in this smoothie- which is good for keeping a slim waist line as well as a healthy nervous system- and good greens to amp up your energy levels, and alkalize the body (which is very much needed these days). Also, I've added ginger to this smoothie to rev up your immune system, metabolism and it's also anti-inflammatory in every way possible.


Green Glow
Step 1:

Gather all of your ingredients!

• 1 cup frozen blueberries (I prefer frozen over fresh for this recipe, but if you want to add fresh blueberries add some ice cubes!)
• 1/2 banana
• 1/2 avocado
• 2 big handfuls of spinach
• 1/4 c hemp hearts
• 2 tbsp chia seeds
• 1 tsp spirulina
• 1 tsp matcha powder
• 1-2 tsp coconut oil
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2- 1 inch of ginger (depending on your taste)
• 1-1 & 1/2 c of water (depending on how thick/ thin you like it)

And sweetener of choice if needed. I personally find this is sweet enough with banana and blueberries.

Step 2:

Put all ingredients into blender. Look at that deliciousness!

Step 3:

Enjoy! Pretty simple, right? 

Come check out these 2 links for more information on healthy fats, and ginger benefits!

• The big fat truth
• Ginger health benefits

Quick, healthy pizza

As promised, here is the pizza recipe I was talking about earlier on in the week.

Once again, I'd like to add that you can modify any of my recipes with what suits your needs. I have a highly restricted diet that keeps me away from a lot of unhealthy options. So a part of my journey is finding quick, but also very healthy food that I can eat.

I started off with a pre-made pizza dough by Sans Gluten Free. I've used so many different types of pizza crust, and this one is by far my favourite because it caters to all of my needs.

Gluten, corn, egg, gmo, tomatoe, and dairy free. Who would think that someone could make a good pizza crust without all of those ingredients? (P.S. This package is a "pizza kit" so it does include tomato sauce if you want to use it for this quick meal). 

You can opt for any other healthy, whole grain pizza crust at your favourite grocery store if that suits you, and just buy pizza sauce for this recipe.

Next on the list is the ingredients:

• A handful of spinach
• 1-2 handfuls of mushrooms
• Pesto sauce (or tomato paste)
• Coconut oil
• Goat cheese (or cheese of your choice)
• Salt and Pepper

And sometimes I like adding turkey bacon if I have it in the house. I'm in love with turkey bacon :)

Preheat the oven at the temperature suggested on the package.

Slice up the mushrooms and cook with oil, salt and pepper. After mushrooms have cooked for about 8 minutes or so, add the spinach, season again, and cover for 2-3 minutes to let spinach wilt (I found if I just add the spinach to the pizza in the oven it doesn't taste as good so I like pre-cooking my vegetables so it tastes better).

Prepare the pizza crust with

1. Sauce
2. Spinach (should be under other ingredients so it doesn't dry out
3. Mushrooms
4. Cheese

Cook for a few minutes in the oven, and viola! Add a glass of white wine (I had Lindemans 2013 Chardonnay) for hot summer days- you've got yourself a perfect, healthy dinner that takes about 15 minutes to make with very little mess!

Baked Quinoa Burgers

I may just die a little bit on the inside after eating these! The other day I found this recipe through Super Healthy Kids who has AMAZING recipes for kids of all ages- but I knew that if I made these I'd be eating them too, they just looked so good!

Super Healthy Kids found the original by Vegetarian Times who did the Crunchy Quinoa Cake recipe.

I had to tinker with it because I can't eat eggs or flour, and I didn't have any red/ white vinegar in my cupboard so I used what  I had at hand (a usual in this household).

• 1 tbsp of chai seeds with 3 tbsp water (egg replacement)- stir and let this sit for 6-7 minutes to thicken into egg consistency
• 2 tbsp rice flour
• 1 1/2 tsp tahini
• 1 1/2 tsp olive oil
• 1 1/2 cups cooked quinoa (I boiled mine in a vegetable broth which I think gave it amazing flavour)
• 1/2 cup finely grated yam
• 1 handful of fresh spinach diced
• 2 oz. regular cheese
• 2 tbsp finely diced onion
• 1/2 tsp salt

If you don't want to sub the rice flour or chia seeds you can follow the original recipe from their website Crunchy Quinoa Cakes

The method to follow this recipe is all just taken from their site. What an easy dish to make!

"Preheat oven to 400°F. Coat baking sheet with cooking spray. Combine egg (or chai seed mix), flour, tahini, and vinegar (I used olive oil) in bowl. Stir in remaining ingredients, then mash together until mixture is firm enough to shape into cakes. Shape mixture into 1/4-cup patties with wet hands. Bake on prepared baking sheet 25 minutes, turning once, or until cakes are browned."

I must say, this dish was a HIT! We even had a friend drop by to help us move some boxes into our new place, and he loved them too! Toli was a bit wary at first and started on the spinach, yes, every mothers dream. He started with the spinach! It didn't take long for him to try them out though, and once he started he didn't stop until he was full :) He even brought some to his Dada who came home full already- such a little sweet pea he is!

For the sauce I used a little dollop of mayo (yes, I know I said I can't eat eggs, but I'm a tad obsessed with mayo for burgers especially so I eat just a little).

I think this dish is going to become a staple in my home. Our friend said it would make a nice side to some protein (even though quinoa already has protein- I can see his point).