My Favorite Quinoa Salad Yet

Attention quinoa lovers!  I have an exciting new quinoa recipe to share with you.  This honestly might be my favorite quinoa salad yet.

But first, a couple other things to share.

I actually made it to the gym yesterday morning before work.  I’m trying to get in more morning workouts, even though for me that means waking up around 5:15am so I can leave by 5:40 and get to the gym on time to START my workout at 6.  That’s if I’m doing an hour workout, so if I’m doing something that won’t take as long I do have some wiggle room.  Either way, I find that when I exercise in the morning, I feel a) more energized throughout the day, and b) less stressed at night when I get home from work because I have more free time.  We’ll see how it goes from here.

My gym sesh was the Monday Morning Ab Burner, hip stretching, and one of the cardio interval workouts from this week’s Best Body Bootcamp plan.  The cardio could be any cardio of choice for 40 minutes, doing 2 minutes at a more challenging level, with a 3 minute recovery.  I chose to break my cardio up and did the first 20 on the treadmill and the second 20 on the spin bike.  The full 40 minutes didn’t seem as daunting that way, and I felt good afterwards.

Rewinding a bit, I wanted to show you guys the homemade pizzas we made on Friday night at Trina and Geoff’s apartment:

We feasted on za’s that had 1) chicken sausage with eggplant, 2) meatball and yellow pepp and onion, and 3) spinach and garlic and mushroom.  With a salad on the side and some beers and/or wine, it was the perfect Friday night meal.  Slesh even tried making a Paleo crust for the mushroom pizza on the bottom right.  She used a coconut/almond flour combo, and I loved it!  Tasted like cornbread.

Also from Friday night…

If you’ve never played this game, click over to this site and download the cards immediately.  It’s like Apples to Apples, only raunchy and wrong.  Easily offended people need not proceed ANY further.

I didn’t really take many other pictures over the weekend, but aside from the impromptu gathering at Trina’s my weekend consisted of gym time, blogging, a night out with Tim’s friends in Porter Square, grocery shopping, cleaning the basement (got rid of so much more stuff!), and watching Shameless.  We also made homemade broccoli cheddar soup for dinner on Sunday night, which I’ll post eventually but I think I promised you guys quinoa, not soup.

So quinoa it is.

I once posted a quinoa salad recipe and called it Colorful Quinoa Salad, but this one is wayyy more colorful.  So I’m calling it the “Very Colorful Quinoa Salad.”

Ingredients

• 1 cup red quinoa
• 2/3 cup red onion, chopped
• 1 avocado, chopped
• 1 can black beans, rinsed and drained
• 1.5 cups pomegranate seeds
• 1 can yellow corn, rinsed and drained
• 1 cup cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
• 1/3 cup cilantro, chopped
• Salt & pepper
• Shrimp, chicken, or your choice of further topping!

Directions

1.  Cook quinoa according to package directions, then set aside to cool.  If you are wondering, I swear by Trader Joe’s red quinoa.

2.  Combine the cooled quinoa with red onion, beans, pomegranate seeds, corn, tomatoes, cilantro, and s&p.

3.  You could also top with any kind of shrimp, chicken, meat, whatever.  Extra protein boost (but the quinoa already is protein stacked).  I sauteed up some shrimp for this.

4.  If making ahead of time like I did, I’d suggest not slicing up the avocado until the night before or right before you plan to eat the salad.  That way it doesn’t brown.

I enjoyed this one for days.  I swear I’m not even trying to be one of those bloggers who says everything is THE BEST EVER (huge, always growing pet peeve).  This one really is my favorite yet, and perhaps even makes the other ones pale in comparison.  Just ask Ashley, I was so excited to eat it for lunch last week that I was talking about it in the locker room during our Thursday morning shower date (sounds creepier than it actually is).  It’s the little things, people.  One of my favorite things about it is that it is so flavorful that I didn’t think it needed dressing or cheese.  Both of which are huge calorie savers when you eliminate them.

If you guys try this one, I want to see pictures so I can see how fun and colorful yours come out!

What’s the most colorful meal you’ve ever made?

Don’t forget your timed planks today for the 31 Day Abs Challenge!  The goal is to beat last week’s time, which if you’ve been keeping up, should happen!