Ok, first my apologies to my Foodies who only access the blog and not my Facebook or Twitter pages. Let me get you up to speed.

I decided to do a cook-long and it works like this. Folks give input on an ingredient they’d like to see everyone get challenged to use in a recipe over the course of the week. I pick an ingredient from those suggested (using a random generator) and we all make something with that ingredient, snap a photo and post it. The idea is…to get new ideas!

So for this inaugural week the ingredient was quinoa. If you’ve never heard of it, read this and we’ll wait for you to come back.

All up to speed now? Lovely.

So tomorrow I’ll announce next week’s ingredient AND I’ll post pictures (and recipes where I have them) of other Foodies’ quinoa submissions. Look for it!

My recipe was in pursuit of an alternative to pasta or potato salad at the forthcoming Memorial Day barbecues. I love cold salads but I just can’t do noodles. So here’s what I came up with. The amount yields enough to pass at a function so if you’re making it just for you OR you’re not sure if others will like it, I highly suggest halving it.

Nik’s Cold Asian-Style Quinoa Salad


Ingredients:

• 1 c. quinoa (if you have some cooked quinoa lying around, great! If not, there’s guidance below)
• 2 c. water (if you have to cook your quinoa)
• 1 red bell pepper, seeded and chopped
• 1 orange bell pepper, seeded and chopped
• 1 small red onion, diced
• 2 c. cooked and shelled edamame (soy beans – I usually just got
•  a bag of frozen edamame and let it thaw!)
• 1 small can tiny shrimp (see picture below OR if you don’t like shrimp a cup of diced cooked chicken meat works fine too)
• 1 small can Mandarin orange slices, drained of their liquids and rinsed
• 1/2 c. Light Asian Sesame or Sesame Ginger salad dressing
• 1/2 c. almond slivers