quin-overload

i am back to cooking! cooking and writing. this won't last long.

my project tonight was a little quinoa salad from bon appetit. it's f-ing hot here, and i couldn't bear to eat anything warm. also, we tend to fall into a pasta rut so i wanted to try a new grain with some extra protein. cold quinoa, corn on the cob, and perhaps a cold steel rail sounds nice, doesn't it?

it promises to be delicious... i love the combination of mint and feta. but be warned, it makes a lot of salad. a lot.

here i started, innocently enough. a nice bowl full of vegetables and chickpeas, mint leaves patiently waiting...



... while the quinoa cooks.

all was well until i realized that i had yet to add the four cups of spinach leaves. holy hell. no way i was going to fit 6 more cups of food into that tiny red bowl. this forced an upgrade (downgrade?) to the none-too-fancy yellow tupperware usually reserved for vats of potato salad at cookouts. but i snuck a little bite and it sure is tasty! i did substitute regular old red wine vinegar for sherry wine vinegar and regular old paprika for smoked paprika. the shrewsbury shaw's only has so much to offer.



perhaps if you're making it for less than a party, you'd like to halve the recipe. i fear we will be eating this for days.

and, for my horsey friends, this is sarah. she refuses to stand still for photos (too busy trying to figure out how to eat the crossties while she is on them), so most are a blur, but she says hi! isn't she pretty?