Health
Habits
Food
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Better Than Butternut: Roasted Delicata Squash Recipe
10 Simple Ways To Eat Less Without Noticing
Juicing: Stupid and Pretentious or Nourishing and Enlightening?
10 Tasty Carbs That Won’t Make You Fat
How To Start Working Out When You Don’t Like To Exercise
Focus More on Your Brain and Less on Your Diet if You’re Serious About Losing Weight
Home Court Habits: The Secret to Effortless Weight Control
10 Reasons You Aren’t Losing Weight When You Think You’re Doing Everything Right
How To Burn More Calories Without Breaking A Sweat
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Foodists
Foodist Approved: DIY Quinoa Salad
So you want to eat healthier but you’re not sure where to begin? A good place to start is revamping your lunch.
Lunch is easy to overlook, inconveniently located smack-dab in the middle of the day. This means you might be tempted by anything you can grab on the go, often a processed-deli-meat sandwich or a deceptively-labeled energy bar.
Since a long lunch and an afternoon siesta are not likely to become a part of our culture anytime soon, the best routine you can get into is to make a big batch of a veggie-loaded whole-grain salad on Sunday evenings. My go-to is a seasonal quinoa salad that I pack with whatever veggies I have left over from our weekly farm share and toss with my favorite lemon miso dressing.
Below is a recipe guide for creating your own quinoa salad. Keep the basics in mind (grain + veggies + dressing) and you really can’t go wrong with mixing and matching. Once you’ve made this recipe a couple of times, you’ll be able to accomplish it in 30 minutes or less.
DIY Quinoa Salad
Yield: 5-6 servings
Ingredients
- 1 cup quinoa or other favorite intact grain (farro, wild rice, wheat berries)
- 1 1/2 cups water
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- kombu seaweed (optional, cook a 2-inch piece with the quinoa to make more digestible)
- 2 cups favorite seasonal vegetables, chopped (green beans, cucumber, kale, tomatoes, fennel, arugula, leftover grilled veggies, etc)
- 1 cup favorite beans (optional, black beans or chickpeas)
- something salty (feta, parmesan, olives or capers)
- something crunchy (chopped walnuts, almonds or sunflower seeds)
- salt and pepper
Dressing
- 1 garlic clove, minced
- 1 teaspoon miso paste, white or yellow
- 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
- 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
Preparation
Rinse quinoa and place in a pot with water, kombu and salt. Cover, bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes or until all water is absorbed. Discard kombu. Transfer to a large bowl to cool.
Whisk together the garlic, miso, lemon juice and olive oil and pour over quinoa.
Chop the veggies and toss with the dressing and quinoa. Mix in any additional favorite ingredients like beans, nuts, seeds, cheese, olives, etc.
Taste and add salt and pepper if needed. Cover and chill in the fridge.
Elyse Kopecky is a social media and digital technology consultant based in Portland, OR. After 10 years working for NIKE and EA SPORTS in Portland, Amsterdam and Geneva she briefly left her desk job for the chance to study culinary nutrition at the Natural Gourmet Institute in NYC. Follow her adventures in the kitchen and on the trail at freshabits.com and @freshabits.
Awesome salad and it looks Yummy too ..
This recipe looks delicious and so well balanced! Looking forward to trying it.
Like the option of using different ingreds, whatever is on hand. I will be taking this to work for lunnch…and miso for pre/probiotics, too!
A wonderful salad! So nutritious and tasty! Thank you, Elyse, for a great lunch!
I was looking through your posts and just wanted to ask about your overarching personal food philosphy, your OPFP. Several pages of recipes in I didnt see any beef and generally a high proportion of plant vs animal products in ypthe recipes. Do you consider yourself a vegetarian or similar?
Not remotely. I encourage Real Food, and far more vegetables than most people eat. You can find out more here: http://summertomato.com/about/
I love the snowing effect on your website, it is very fitting for where I live (Buffalo, NY). Keep the awesome posts coming and Happy New Year! 🙂
Hi Darya, I found your website from a magazine and I think it’s fantastic. The problem that I’m having is I can’t see the recipes. When I click on a link, it describes the dish but no recipe. Am I missing something? Thanks
Yep, an update yesterday broke the recipe posts. They should be back up soon. Thanks for letting me know.
Oh, alright. Thank you.