Recipe: Quinoa With Avocado Salsa Salad

Prep time: 5 mins (mostly chopping)
Cooking time: 10-15 mins

This is a very easy recipe (as most salads are). The only cooking involved here is for the quinoa and if you're always in a hurry you can always cook your quinoa ahead (they're usually last for 2-3 days in the fridge). Just make sure you store them using a tightly sealed container. I'm no Quinoa expert but the way I cook it is 2 parts water for 1 part Quinoa (2:1). And I usually just let it boil till the water evaporates (just like how you would cook rice). This is the guide I used when I cooked my first batch and I stuck to it because it yielded just the right way I'd like my Quinoa to be. To be honest, I'm still in the process of discovering and trying out everything I read to be a healthier and better for my body. I'm lucky to always stumble on tasty recipes though and I don't think I'm giving up anytime soon on this experimentation. 

This was the lunch I packed for work yesterday and I shared it with my co-workers who loved it!

I have yet to really incorporate this pseudo grain into my daily meal plan but I usually try to prepare something 2 to 3 times a week. The past few weeks, I did my recipes during the weekends because that's when we buy our groceries and that's also when my ingredients are the freshest. But this week, I got a little lazy and went to eat mostly what was prepared by our helper. Come mid-week however, I rushed to prepare some Quinoa because I was looking for other ways to use the fruits and greens that have been sitting in the fridge for a few days already. So this recipe I'm sharing is sort of a throw-in-everything-in-there kind of thing (hehehe) because I pretty much used what's in our fridge. 

I used:

1 cup cooked Quinoa

1 bunch Leaf lettuce, torn into bite size pieces
1 tsp black beans (the salted kind in can but i plan to make this using the real ones next time)

Avocado salsa:
1 medium size tomatoes, chopped
1 small red onion, chopped finely
1 tsp calamansi juice
1 small avocado, diced
1/2 cup ripe mangoes, diced
spring onions, for garnish
a pinch of salt and pepper to taste

Dressing (I just put everything in a small bottle and just shook the bottle till they're evenly mixed):
2 tsps EVOO
1 tsp coco vinegar
1 tsp honey

How I did it:


Toss everything in a salad bowl and drizzle with dressing. If you have some cashew nuts on hand, chop them up and garnish as well. The nutty flavor would definitely compliment all the sweet and tangy flavors in this salad.

Enjoy!!!!

**Quinoa is very low in Cholesterol and Sodium. It is also a good source of Magnesium and Phosphorus, and a very good source of Manganese.

Read More http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/cereal-grains-and-pasta/10352/2#ixzz1vyU80rOW

How To Cook Juicy Hotdogs Sans The Scary Oil

I know I have been sharing in my previous posts how I've been trying to get my family to eat healthier this year. We've successfully cut down our meat (basically just pork and chicken since we've long given up red meat anyways) consumption from 4x a week to just 2-3x a week (the rest of the week is mostly just fish and veggies). On weekends however, we allow our daughter to indulge on 'bad' food - hotdogs, fastfood treats, some nuggets maybe. We've never really prohibited her to eat hotdogs anyways (especially during birthday parties) but it was only last year (during the holidays actually) that she developed a likeness for it. Since then, she would occasionally request that I get her hotdogs when I shop for our weekly groceries.

I myself was never fond of eating hotdogs. It was probably because the hotdogs that were served to me as a child were always wrinkly and a oily (they would soak up the paper towels when drained). And they never looked appetizing. My folks had always cooked hotdogs by frying them in oil. But I thought there must be a better way of doing it. So I experimented and eventually got the perfect juicy hotdog even with just a pan as my cooking tool [I was of course comparing it to perfectly done hotdogs in Purefoods'stalls where a hotdog griller (is that even the correct term?) is used]. So how did I do it?

Simple. I used water (about 1/4 cup poured it directly unto the pan with semi-frozen hotdogs already in it) to cook the hotdogs instead of oil. And to lock in (talaga!) the juiciness, I'd add in a teeny tiny bit of butter (like about 1/8 of a teaspoon for 6 hotdogs) when the water is about to fully evaporate and this is what I get.

my point and shoot just wouldn't cooperate with me so i apologize for the blurry shot but see? no wrinkles!

What are you having for breakfast today?