Asian Style Quinoa Salad

The quinoa trend has quickly caught on in the past year and yet I haven't shared a recipe staring this grain. Quinoa is known to be a superfood that is packed full of nutrients and provides vegetarians and vegans a healthy dose of protein. I'm not a vegetarian or a vegan, but enjoying recipes such as this lighten's up my meals and gives me a fresh take on enjoying summer food and produce.

I was actually inspired by my friend (who shall remain unnamed for now), who started bringing in quinoa salads to school as a lunch every day. She told me that she makes it in a large batch over the weekend and packs it away each day over the next week. She experiments with different flavor combinations (last week's salad was tossed in an Asian peanut sauce), and this got me thinking about how I could cook something like this as well. I was inspired by her last quinoa salad, and decided to focus my first go at it using Asian flavors.

Recipe:

- 1 cup quinoa

- 2 cups water (to cook the quinoa)

- 3 small carrots

- 2 cucumbers

- 1/4 of a purple cabbage head

- 3 scallions

- 1 bunch cilantro (depending on taste)

- handful unsalted peanuts, chopped

DRESSING:

- juice of 2 limes

- 1 clove garlic, minced

- 1 tsp fresh ginger, minced

- 1/4 cup low sodium soy sauce

- 1 tbsp. honey

Directions:

The first step is to cook the quinoa. I'm using Ancient Harvest Traditional Quinoa: Organic White Grain, but any brand will do. Bring the quinoa and water up to a boil and then simmer until there is no water left and the quinoa is fluffy (mine took around 15 min). Make sure to watch the pot to make sure that the quinoa doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan. Next, chop up all of the vegetables so that they are in bite size pieces. For the purple cabbage, I shaved the leaves so that I would end up with little 'ribbons'. Then, chop up the peanuts into smaller pieces. However, this step is optional since they are already quite small.

The dressing is quite tangy from all of the lime juice, you can adjust the amount of lime depending on your taste. After making the dressing, toss all of the ingredients together and enjoy!