The Quinoa Bowl

January 9th, 2014 | Posted by Alison Spath in Dinner Time - (2 Comments)

I love this term “quinoa bowl”.  It just sounds so… cozy.  Like we should nestle right in and rest our heads on pillows of soft, fluffy quinoa and take a little nap.

Sweet potato spinach quinoa with cumin

Or just eat it.  That’s fine too.

Over the holidays I tried my hand at Sweet Potato Kale Quinoa Cakes to take to a New Years Eve dinner party, but they were sort of a flop.  They tasted great, but they didn’t hold together very well.  Still, even though the quinoa cakes were a fail, the ingredients were a win and I was left wanting to make it as a dinner side – more specifically, a “quinoa bowl” that I’ve seen around the interwebs and have been excited to steal try.  A quinoa bowl is comfort food with benefits – warm and carby, but some nutritional perks you don’t get with rice or pasta.  Read more...

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The Lunchtime Puzzle

October 20th, 2011 | Posted by Alison Spath in Motivation - (4 Comments)

Two days a week, the girls go off to class for three hours in the afternoon.

That means two days a week, I have three hours to myself.

Sometimes I stay and help out in class, sometimes I run errands, sometimes I do housework, sometimes I work on a blog post.

Lentil Taco Salad

Sometimes I eat leftover lentil tacos on a bed of lettuce with salsa, Greek yogurt and 1/2 an avocado for lunch in front of my computer so I can watch Modern Family on Hulu.  Read more...

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Stuff It, Quinoa

September 7th, 2011 | Posted by Alison Spath in Lunch - (1 Comments)

When I bought my bag of flax seed over the weekend, I snagged a bag of another now-infamous pseudo-grain/seed –>

Arrowhead Mills Quinoa Black Bean and Quinoa Stuffed Peppers

oh, Quinoa – it’s been a while!

And with quinoa in my cupboard, suddenly I had quinoa stuffed peppers on the brain. That meant digging through the blog archives to remind myself how I made Quinoa Stuffed Red Peppers in the past.

Ummm, that was like my second post. Ever.

Nostalgia rules. Stuffed peppers make me drool.  Read more...

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Leftover Lentil Burger Leftovers

August 23rd, 2011 | Posted by Alison Spath in Lunch - (5 Comments)

A great way beat the leftover blues is to create something new and different with your uneaten foodstuffs from a previous meal.

Thanks to a big scoop of rolled oats, lentil tacos from Sunday were turned into lentil burgers last night.

Lentil Tacos Turned Lentil Burgers

With oats stirred in to the last of the lentil taco filling and then given a few minutes to sit, they’ll very generously soak up the sauce and thicken up. It’s then easy to form the mixture into patties with your hands.

Cooked in a lightly oiled pan for about 15 – 18 minutes, flipped a couple of times.  Read more...

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I Get Up Early Because I am Lazy

December 1st, 2010 | Posted by Alison Spath in Parenting - (7 Comments)

I typically get up somewhere in the 6 o’clock hour, without an alarm.  Most people would not call this lazy – but really, that’s exactly what it is.

My kids stay up late you see, and there are different reasons for this fact – some a bit closer to the real truth than others.  It all depends on who’s asking. And while each reason is true, I have one answer for the conservative crowd, one answer for the neutral crowd, and one answer for the other people who have admitted to lazy-parenting short cuts in the past – no judgment.  Read more...

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