new food try: quinoa!

As per my January goals, I vow to try new foods.

I made a list:

-sweet potatoes

-quinoa

-tofu

-polenta

-lentils

I know, my list is pretty short, but it's a start, right? Today's new food on the menu: quinoa. I've heard a lot about this, and I've heard people say that this is the new power food, and it's taking the place of pomegranates which were always the popular power food. Anyways, yes, back to the quinoa. I had trouble finding it at the grocery store. I just shop at Giant Eagle, and we don't have a local Trader Joe's, or Whole Foods, sadly. It was luck that I found the expensive, $5 box of quinoa at the store.

Mr. Skinny was very skeptical about this food. He actually asked me if I had ground up spongebob to try to feed it to him. I would love to tape his response to this food. I was about halfway through my plate before he even touched his. He told me he wasn't hungry, because he was starving on the way home from work and ate his foreman's leftover lunch and all his snacks. Wonderful. Oh well, I told him that when he's hungry tonight he has to eat his leftover stir fry.

Quinoa is cooked just like rice. I wasn't quite sure how it would taste, so I cooked mine in chicken broth just to add a little flavor to it. While the quinoa was cooking, I made some stir-fry veggies that I had lying around. I added some leftover shrimp and soy sauce (of course!). I added some extra green beans, too, since the bag of veggies wasn't a huge amount. It made about 4 servings, and we had a huge plateful. It was pretty impressive.

The quinoa itself was pretty good. I was leary at first, but it was good. Now I have to find more recipes for the quinoa. I made Mr. Skinny taste it, and he was okay with it.

-----------------------

Who has some great quinoa recipes to share with me? What are some new foods that you tried and now like?