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Saturday, April 19, 2014

Q is for Quinoa


Quinoa (keeeeen-wah)

I thought I was going to freak the family out - all sorts of new foods to try today (and Miss Angela also had homemade perogis while over at her boyfriend's house who is 100% Polish, but I digress)

I'd found a recipe for orange chicken and had gone to the grocery story to get the multitude of ingredients and found this stuff instead.....

The equivalent to about 5 fewer ingredients that I won't use again?
Take my Money!

And instead of rice, I wanted to try Quinoa for the first time.  This had been in my cabinet for probably 3 months and I finally had an excuse to make it.  


 Hmm.  Reminds me of bird seed. 

 It had sort of a nutty scent while it was simmering. 
When I make rice, I usually use broth for some extra umpf- 
I wanted to make this the first time with just water so the true flavor (such as it is) would come thru.
There's not a whole lot of flavor to it alone, so you can mix it with anything!

 You can see the translucence here. 
The hubby said they look like lizard eyeballs.  Nice!

If the quinoa looks like lizard eyes, the chicken looks like alien fetuses!

My dad always said if it weren't for low class, I wouldn't have any class at all.  
And I married a guy just as bad!  LOL!

So basically, I followed the recipe on the bottle of sauce.  I cut up the chicken & sauteed it with some garlic, I mixed in some steamed broccoli & the orange / ginger sauce and let it all heat up so the sauce could thicken some.  Right before serving, I mixed in a can of drained mandarin oranges.  

So overall, I got the approval to make both the orange chicken & quinoa again.