The Best Salad Ever

I am proud to say I'm sharing my first original recipe! I hadn't intended to use any creative skills this weekend, but I had purchased some Quinoa and none of the recipes I found were speaking to my soul :)

I took some ideas from about 8 different recipes and added some other ingredients that I thought would be tasty to create The Quinoa & Lentil Vegetable-Loaded Tahini Garlic Dressed Extravaganza (or The Best Salad Ever).

This was my first time working with both Quinoa (Keen-Wah) and Lentils, so that was a journey in and of itself. The package of Quinoa included cooking instructions in bulk (essentially) since it was asking to cook a full cup (dry) of the stuff (would amount to 680 calories worth of Quinoa!). Whoa, whoa... I went for just 1/4 cup, which is a serving. I brought 3/4 cup of Fat Free Chicken broth to a boil and added the Quinoa (after rinsing) and cooked covered for about 10 minutes. For the Lentils, I brought a cup of water to a boil and added 1/4 cup dry, cooking covered (lid tilted) for about 20 minutes (I didn't time it honestly, so I'm not sure how long it was, but I tasted them to make sure they were at the right texture point).

While my grains/legumes were cooking, I prepared a dressing that was inspired by a recipe from The Coup Cookbook (modified greatly).

To my food-processor, I added:

2 Tablespoons Tahini
2 Cloves Garlic
2 Tablespoons Olive Oil
2 Tablespoons Apple Cider Vinegar
The Juice of 1 Large Lemon
A Dash of Salt
A Dash of Pepper

I processed until all ingredients were incorporated and placed in the fridge to cool.

This dressing isn't quite as healthy as most dressings I consume/prepare because of the Tahini (which is calorically & nutritionally similar to Peanut Butter). The next time I make this, I will likely make it more of a Tahini Vinaigrette using more vinegar and less Tahini, but it was really yummy! As a side-note, you could easily replace this dressing with Trader Joe's Goddess Dressing and get the same creamy effect.

Once my dressing was ready to go, I began to chop all of my veggies. I used the following raw ingredients:

4 Cosmopolitan Lettuce Leaves

8 Grape Tomaotes

1 Large Slice Red Onion

1 Tablespoon Chopped Black Olives

2 Whole Artichoke Hearts

1 Small Bunch Cilantro

In a sauce-pan I sauteed 1/2 Cup Chopped Bell Pepper (Red, Yellow, Green) and 1/2 Cup Celery for about 5 minutes

Lastly, I added the Tahini Garlic Dressing

And mixed until the salad was evenly dressed...

Here's the finished product with the delicious Filet (thank you Boyfriend) and Artichoke dinner that I had last night!

The salad makes 4 servings. Here are the nutritional facts per serving:

Calories 164

Fat 10.98g

Sodium 66mg

Carbs 13.13g

Fiber 2.75g

Sugar 1.38g

Protein 3g

I had it again today for lunch with some Red Pepper soup and it was just as good, if not better! I will definitely be making this often with some tweaks to the dressing.