Last week as I was poking though the kitchen cupboards thinking “what is all this stuff?” I found a bag a quinoa that I had bought last winter. When I saw it in the store I remember thinking “Why don’t I ever make quinoa? ” And then I bought it — and never made quinoa.

As I examined the bag of quinoa I noticed that the back of the package had a recipe for Quinoa Tabouleh Salad. Perfect! Tabouleh salad is a summer staple of mine but it had never occurred to me to make it with quinoa.

I modified their recipe slightly by eliminating the the feta cheese and olive oil, bumping up the lemon juice, and adding fax meal for fat and nutrition, and some red-wine vinegar. I also tried to go heavy on the parsley, because believe it or not it qualifies as a leafy dark green — woot woot!

Ingredients:

1 cup quinoa
2 cups water
1 large cucumber diced
3 roma tomatoes diced
2 tablespoons flax meal
1 cup chopped parsley (or more)
2 tbs chopped kalamata olives (optional)
1 tbs chopped mint
2 tbs lemon juice
2 tbs red wine vinegar
salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:

1. Bring 2 cups water and 1 cup quinoa to a boil.
2. Cover saucepan with a tight-fitting lid and cook on low heat for 15 minutes.
3. Remove from heat, keeping lid on, and let stand for 3 to 5 minutes until water is absorbed. Fluff with fork.
4. When quinoa is reasonably cool, combine with all other ingredients in a large mixing bowl.

I did not add the olives only because I didn’t have any. I also threw in a partial can of chick peas that needed to be eaten. Here is the final product:

It was super tasty and bonus — I got to use some of the mint from my back porch container garden. My parsley plant is not quite big enough for a recipe like this but soon … soon!