I Don't Know This Food

One of the things on my Life List is to find a recipe with ingredients that I don't know; learn about them and prepare the dish. Well, earlier this week one of the recipes I made included quinoa. I had no idea what quinoa was, other than round and couscous-like. It was also popular on Pinterest for months before I figured out how to pronounce it. (It's "keen-wah.")

It tastes better than it looks. Drizzle some balsalmic vinegar on it!

Quinoa is really delicious. I can't believe it took me so long to try it! (Actually, I can. It took me a really long time to find it at the grocery store, so I imagine it would have never occurred to me if I weren't making a recipe that called for it.)

Quinoa isn't technically a grain, even though it pretends to be. It cooks like rice, but it's really a seed. (Couscous is a pasta, that's how they're different.) Quinoa is fluffy and high in protein and supposedly really good for you. But more importantly — at least in my world — it's yummy and filling. Which was really important this week.

Have you tried quinoa?