Just the beginning...

I am so excited and couldn't wait to blog about this delightful dish I made last night!

This is just the beginning of my unfortunately slow and grueling quest to feed myself and my family (for a lack of better words) "better" food.  Food that are less processed with as few added flavorings, stabilizers, and preservatives.  There's so much to learn, so much to educate myself on about our easily available foods out there that it will take me some time.  Thank you to friends that are already deep in that quest.  They continue to inspire me to go forth and seek out better choices.

What I made last night was 100% inspired by my friend Lentine's recipe for Roasted Squash + Lemon-Tahini Quinoa.  My intent was to completely follow her recipe.  Unfortunately, variety and choices are a little limited here in my little ol' town, so I made do with what is immediately available to me and whatever was in my fridge at the time.  I'll have to wait until we go to the city so that I can get better ingredients.  For now, this is what I came up with.

I cooked the quinoa first so that it can cool while I'm prepping the other stuff.  I made 2 cups of dried with 4 cups of chicken broth.  I just love cooking my brown rice in chicken broth, so I thought it would be yummy with quinoa, too.  Just follow the directions on the package.  For those of you who are already quinoa lovers, yeah, 2 cups is overkill, but we love it for lunches and snacks the next day, so I'm sure you understand!

Forgive me, but I can't remember what this squash is called!  I peeled off the little stickers and balled them up really good.  I wasn't about to dig in the trash for this little ball.  They sell it at the commissary for those of you with access.  Whatever this is, which I tried to get as close as the one Lentine had on her recipe, the color was so vibrant on the inside and it smelled so rich!  I drizzled a little extra virgin olive oil on it, spread it around a bit and topped with kosher salt and pepper.  In the oven for about an hour, and they were ready!

In the meantime, while the quinoa is cooking/cooling and the squash is baking, I started chopping all kinds color.  Again, I didn't quite have all the goodies Lentine had in her recipe.  As best as my refrigerator could produce, I came up with cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, red onion, and green onions, all chopped about bite size.

Now the measurements for this is all up to you.  I follow one of my tabbouleh recipes for 1 cup dry bulgur, they use 1/4 cup each of these liquids.  Since I have 2 cups dry quinoa, I freshly squeezed 1/2 cup of lemon juice, probably more because I LOVE citrusy stuff, and 1/2 cup of extra virgin olive oil, could probably go less on that.

Drizzle the olive oil and lemon on the cooled quinoa, mix it all around.  Right before serving, I mixed the veggies into the quinoa and let that sit for a little bit.  I also let the squash sit and cool for about 10 minutes before I spooned the quinoa in it.

...and here's what I came up with!

Oh man!  It was soooooo good!  Who would've thought that something so good for you could be good tasting!  I overate a little bit last night, but what's new, right?  That's another quest to be conquered.  For now, baby steps....