Quinoa with Vegetables

Yesterday, David and I were finishing up Christmas cookies (28 dozen total, 6 different kinds, plus a pan of fudge) so I did not really have access to the oven or cookie sheets when making dinner. I also didn't want to do anything with measuring cups because we had basically dirtied all those as well. I had pasta for lunch so that was out. I decided anything versatile that you can do on the stove top would be best. I decided to do a quinoa with vegetables dish, kind of like a rice stir fry but not really. I got the idea from a recipe online but we changed enough (it's a very versatile dish) that I'm not going to link it.

Make your quinoa according to the box instructions. For us, that's 1 cup quinoa to 2 cups water (we wanted to use broth but we didn't trust our cubes to dissolve right with these cooking instructions so we just used water instead. This dinner was completely vegan.)

Then heat up vegetables. We used carrots, bell peppers, and corn. I considered adding onion but that seemed like more work than I wanted so I ended up using onion powder. The corn was a great addition though and I would not leave that out if I make it again. The sweetness really paired well with the quinoa.

I had made a dressing of oil, lime juice, cumin, chili powder, garlic powder, onion powder (as mentioned above), and salt but you could barely taste it. I don't know if I just didn't use enough of the ingredients or if the ratio of dressing to quinoa and vegetables was off or what but I could barely taste it. David ate his plain but per his suggestion, I tried it with salsa (mild of course. I have no spice tolerance) and that was really really good.

I would make this again. It was quick, easy, and relatively healthy. Plus, you can make it with whatever you have on hand. You don't even need beans or a meat because the quinoa has plenty of protein. Of course, you could add them if you wanted to. I may try to add the seasonings without the oil to the quinoa and maybe double it or something so they're more obvious. I did think I used at least a tablespoon of everything but apparently it just didn't work out. It's still rather puzzling to me but oh well. I definitely recommend this.

On a side note, we did finish our Christmas cookies. We started them on Friday  night, did several batches on Saturday, and did a couple more batches last night. We made sugar cookies (with sprinkles), buckeye balls, oreo cream cheese balls, peanut butter blossoms, shortbread, thumbprints, and then the fudge. It was a lot of work but totally worth it. We're sending some to my family, David's taking some to work, and then the rest will get eaten by us (and David's parents when they come to work on the house this weekend).