OK, for those of you who have not had the distinct pleasure of eating quinoa (pronounced “keen-wah”), have I got a great new vegan, vegetarian, and gluten free, make ahead salad recipe for you. But before I go any further, perhaps you would like to know a bit about quinoa. (For those of you who already know all about this amazing seed, please feel free to skip the next paragraph.) But for those of you who were lucky enough to be born with inquiring minds, but have yet to discover this ancient food, allow me to provide you with a bit of information on the subject.

Quinoa originated in the Andean region of Ecuador, Bolivia, Columbia, and Peru where it was successfully domesticated about 5,000 years ago. According to the Huffington Post web site, quinoa is high in protein (its protein balance is similar to milk and has more protein than rice, millet, or wheat), is a good source of riboflavin (riboflavin helps reduce frequency of migraine attacks by improving the energy metabolism within the brain and muscle cells), is alkaline-forming (helps balance the bloods pH level), has only 172 calories per ¼ cup of dry quinoa, is gluten free, and is a complex carbohydrate that helps our bodies maintain a lower glycemic index.

So, when I was figuring out the menu for an upcoming home concert, I decided to serve 3 salads, 2 of which I wanted to be both vegetarian and vegan. (The third, Quick and Easy Cole Slaw (recipe soon to be published) would also be vegetarian, but because mayonnaise would be the main dressing ingredient, it would not be vegan.) So, I decided on a simple green salad with mustard-herb dressing. And then, why not a salad made with quinoa.

So, as I was researching other cooks’ recipes for quinoa salad, I decided to also look at my own recipes containing this healthy ingredient. And there, in living color was my warm side dish recipe for Lemony Quinoa with Fresh Herbs. After glancing at the ingredients, I thought this could easily be made vegetarian and served as a salad. (Sometimes I even impress myself.) (Mind you, not as often as it would please me to be able to brag about to one and all.) Anyway, I modified my existing recipe to fit my needs, and the recipe you see below is the result. And it was really delicious.  

So, if you too would like to serve a healthy salad to your family and friends, that can be made ahead, and almost everyone can eat, this is the recipe for you.

Well, that’s it for today. Both Mr. C. and I are in recovery mode. Last Sunday we hosted a luncheon and classical music concert for our friends who are themselves classical musicians, friends of the musicians performing on Sunday, or our friends who regularly listen to classical music. It was so amazing. Most people are used to hearing Mr. C. play straight up jazz, jazz infused rock and blues, jazz standards and soul, and traditional tango music. So, hearing him play classical music was a side of Mr. C’s talents they had yet to hear. For me, it was a dream come true. I am a classical music lover. So, to have people in our home who are also passionate about classical music was simply heaven.

May you too also continue to enjoy what makes you happy and brings you peace. It doesn’t matter if it’s travel, or watching football, or taking trips in your RV, or cooking a great meal for your family, or reading books, or hiking, or playing golf, etc. What matters is that you take the time to do something that feeds your soul. And it makes you happy.

We need all the help we can get during these difficult times. We are all on a roller coaster. If we don’t take good care of ourselves, we aren’t going to be able to help others endure the havoc a few very wealthy, irresponsible people are imposing on our country. It truly does take a village.

Peace and love to all.  

2 tsp. extra virgin olive oil  

1 c. dry quinoa, well rinsed (I used tricolored quinoa)

1⅓ c. vegetable broth  

pinch kosher salt

freshly ground black pepper

½ tsp. lemon zest

2 T. fresh lemon juice, plus more to taste

1 T. chopped fresh basil

⅓ c. loosely packed finely chopped Italian parsley

 In a medium saucepan, heat oil and add rinsed quinoa. Cook for about 4 minutes, stirring frequently, until the quinoa is lightly toasted.

Add broth, salt, and pepper.

Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, cover, and cook for 15 minutes or until the broth is entirely absorbed. Stir periodically.

Remove from heat and fluff with a fork. Let the cooked quinoa sit until mostly cooled, then stir in the lemon zest and lemon juice.

When completely cooled stir in the chopped basil and parsley, fluff again with fork until well combined. Taste and adjust seasoning and add additional lemon juice if desired.

Cover and refrigerate. Remove from the fridge about 45 minutes before needed and fluff again just before serving.

OK, I had never (to the best of my knowledge) tasted a sweet pickle before making this salad. I’m a dill and bread and butter pickle gal. Well, that is, until I offered to make one of the salads for Duck Fest. Allow me to describe “Duck Fest”. An annual get-together for friends to eat duck (this time duck mousse, duck quesadillas, duck tenders, 5 salads, and the best cake you ever tasted).

This was this year’s Duck Fest cake. Amazing to look at, and irresistibly delicious. Part of the cake was chocolate and the other white cake with a blueberry filling. Yum to the max!

To this event, each person is asked to bring a “duck” gift wrapped in a brown paper bag. Then it’s a regular white elephant gift exchange where guests exchange gifts that are impractical or humorous. The goal is to have fun, not to get a valuable gift. Players then draw numbers and take turns picking a gift from the pile. Players can also steal a gift that another player has opened. But hosts Mark and Vicki have limited the “steals” to only one. Good thinking! Otherwise, it’s just too chaotic. (And presently, we all have enough “chaotic” in our lives.)  Anyway, it’s a fun event. And all of us who are lucky enough to be invited always have a great time. And thank you Mark and Vicki for yet another wonderful afternoon of friends, fun, and wonderful food. But back to this salad.

Vicki gave me the recipe from the foodiecrush.com site and provided the ingredients. She had made a couple of changes to the recipe herself, but I told her I would follow the recipe closely. Which I did. Almost. But I have been experiencing more and more how raw onions often have a sharp taste. So, soaking cut onions in ice water that you plan to serve raw significantly reduces the strong, pungent flavor by leaching out the sulfur compounds responsible for the sharp taste. So, that’s what I did. I also may have inadvertently added a bit more chopped sweet pickle to the mix. My bad!

But let me make this perfectly clear. This recipe makes for one delicious macaroni salad. It’s easy to prepare. It should be made ahead. And it feeds an army. Although the recipe calls for hard boiled eggs, I personally think they could be left out and no one would know the difference. And eggs, well, they’re a bit pricy now. So, forget the eggs if you must and spend those extra dollars on good quality pasta instead. Using good quality pasta and cooking it al denté is the key to making any macaroni salad better.

The other tiny, itsy-bitsy modification I made was what I always do when preparing salad ahead of time. I take the salad out of the fridge before serving it, stir it, taste it, and if not perfect, I figure out what is needed to make it better. In this case, the salad was a bit dry, and it needed just a bit more pickle flavor. So, I made a bit more dressing and chopped up a couple more pickles.  

I do this every time I serve a salad that has been happily residing in my fridge overnight. And why I never serve salad to guests in the original mixing bowl. And yes, it means one more bowl to wash. But we all eat with our eyes first. And a messy bowl of salad is not as appealing as one served in a nice bowl with a bit of something decorating the surface.

Well, that’s it for today. I’m just about finished with Louise Penny’s 2024 book entitled The Grey Wolf set once again in and around the Québec village of Three Pines. Great writing as always. So, I recommend you read this book. And make this salad. You will not be disappointed. You can even eat this salad while reading this book. A two thumbs up if ever there was one!

And as always, peace and love to all.  

1 lb. sm. tube shaped pasta like ditalini or tubetti (small shells or small elbow macaroni works too)

⅓ red onion, finely minced

2 celery ribs, diced (leaves too) 

1 red bell pepper, small dice

1 yellow or orange bell pepper, small dice

 heaping ½ c. chopped sweet pickles (sweet gherkins) 

1 c. mayonnaise

¼ c. plus 1 tablespoon sweet pickle juice

2 tsp. granulated sugar

1½ T. Dijon mustard

½ tsp. kosher salt, or more to taste

freshly ground black pepper

3 hard-boiled eggs, diced, opt.

1-2 T. chopped fresh parsley, opt.

Cook the pasta in salted water until al denté. Drain in a colander and rinse under cold water until the pasta is cool to the touch. Shake the colander to drain away as much pasta cooking water as possible. While the pasta sits, toss it occasionally with clean hands. (I drain the pasta and just leave it sitting in the colander in my sink while I chop the veggies and do all the other prep work.)

Place the finely minced red onion in a bowl with ice water. Set aside for about 20 minutes before draining. Dry the minced onion in a paper towel.  

Place the cut celery, minced red and yellow bell peppers, chopped sweet pickles, and onion in a large mixing bowl.  

In a small mixing bowl, whisk the mayo, pickle juice, Dijon mustard, salt, and pepper together.

Add the dressing to the veggie mixture along with the drained pasta and chopped hard boiled eggs. Stir carefully so as not to break up the chopped hard-boiled eggs.

Taste and adjust seasoning.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least an hour, but even better if refrigerated overnight.

Before serving, especially if the salad has been refrigerated overnight, stir the salad and if it seems a bit dry, make just ⅓-½ cup more dressing (rough estimate of amounts) and ⅓ cup more minced pickles and add them to the mix. Stir the salad again, taste, and add salt and/or pepper as needed.

Transfer the salad to a nice salad bowl and sprinkle with freshly chopped parsley.

Best when allowed to be unrefrigerated for about an hour before serving.   

What to fix for dinner? That is often the first thought that hits me as I am reading the morning paper while sipping my Americano. You would think, with all the bad news coming out of Putin’s need to rule the world, that dinner would be the furthest thing from my mind. But unfortunately, I can do nothing to stop Putin, but I can do something about making sure our evening’s repast is enjoyable.

So, the other day, after breakfast, while I was whipping up the marinade for Quick and Easy Marinated Flank Steak, I thought a Mediterranean style salad with lots of strong flavors would fit the bill perfectly as an accompaniment. But I didn’t want a green salad. (I do get a bit tired of green salads.) So, how about a pasta salad? Nope, at least not one with the usual pasta suspects. But then I remembered I had some Israeli (pearl) couscous in the pantry. Voilà! Couscous tabbouleh it is! (And yes, couscous is a form of pasta. See a brief explanation below.)

So, with a new salad idea in mind, I went to work on creating the recipe you find below. Of course, I didn’t make it quite like the recipe indicates, because I was out of tomatoes and cucumber. And there was no going to the store for us because there was still an abundance of snow in our area. So, no tomatoes or cucumber. But I certainly will include them next time I make this dish.

So, I hope you enjoy this salad as much as we did. I do realize that there are more ingredients in this recipe than you normally find in a tabbouleh salad. But hey, I like bold flavors in my tabbouleh, hence the kalamata olives, pepperoncini, and feta cheese. But you of course can leave them out.

There is still snow on the ground after 4 days, which is quite unusual for us. But rain is in the forecast, so it might be gone by this evening or at the latest by tomorrow evening. Speaking of tomorrow, Mr. C. and I will be celebrating our 29^th anniversary by attending a matinee and then dinner at one of our favorite restaurants. Good grief how the time has flown. But I wouldn’t have wanted it to fly by with anyone else. Mr. C. is my best friend, the kindest person anyone could ever hope to meet, and basically the love of my life. And he plays a wicked piano. Could any gal ask for more?

Peace and love to all.  

For the vinaigrette:

⅓ c. extra virgin olive oil

2 T. fresh lemon juice

1 tsp. dill weed

2 garlic cloves, finely minced

½ tsp. seasoned salt

freshly ground black pepper

Whisk all ingredients together in a mixing bowl. Set aside until needed.

For the couscous:

1 T. extra virgin olive oil

1 c. pearl couscous

1 c. boiling water

1 tsp. vegetable base (I use Better Than Bouillon Vegetable base)

1 c. halved grape or cherry tomatoes

1 c. diced English cucumber

½ c. finely chopped celery

½ c. sliced kalamata olives

⅓ c. finely chopped red onion

⅓ c. chopped pepperoncini  

2 T. chopped fresh parsley

1 (14-oz.) can artichoke hearts, roughly chopped  

1 c. crumbled feta cheese

Heat the olive oil in a medium-sized, covered, heavy pot. Add the couscous and sauté until golden brown. Add the boiling water and vegetable base. Quickly cover the saucepan with a lid and let the couscous simmer for about 10 minutes undisturbed until it has fully absorbed the liquid. Remove the lid, fluff with a fork, and allow to come to room temperature.

In a large mixing bowl, combine the tomatoes, cucumber, celery, kalamata olives, red onion, pepperoncini, parsley, and artichoke hearts. Mix together. When cool, gently stir in the couscous.

Give the vinaigrette a quick whisk and add it to the couscous mixture. Mix well to combine. Adjust seasoning. Just before serving, mix in the crumbled feta.

*Couscous

According to the food network, “All couscous is made from semolina. Semolina is the name we give to flour that is ground from durum wheat. Durum wheat is a very hard wheat, higher in protein than the wheat all-purpose flour is made from. Semolina is golden yellow and gives couscous a nuttier taste than a pasta made with all-purpose flour. Keep in mind when using couscous that it is made from wheat and therefore, it’s not gluten-free.

Israeli couscous is made from the same semolina flour that Moroccan couscous is, but the balls of dough are larger and more consistently round.”