On it’s own, this Quinoa with Roasted Vegetables, Feta, and Almonds is the perfect lunch or dinner - hot or cold - and holds up for the entire week. On top of it all, I will show you how you could use these four ingredients to supply any meal throughout your week!

Let me start out this post by saying that I’m very excited that I had this light and healthy meal for dinner tonight because I’m hoping to indulge a bit (AKA veg out) during the Superbowl! We are going to our family friend’s Eric’s place for the game (he has an 80 inch TV!) and he is an AMAZING cook. I also am planning on bringing a flatbread (recipe to come!). I heard on the Today show that the strategy for healthy game day snacking is eat raw vegetables up until halftime. After halftime, go crazy! Not sure if i’ll make it til the halftime game. Not sure if I want to even try and do that. If you’re still looking for some healthy Superbowl snack ideas, my Baked Sweet Potato Chips, Garlic White Bean Spread, and Goat Cheese Deviled Eggs would be my recommendations :).

I’ll be honest with y’all (after spending a year working in New Orleans, I can truly say that y’all is an incredibly useful word) I had been thinking about a recipe like this for a while. When I do grocery shopping on a weekend, I like to think about how I can maximize the use of the things I buy outside of one recipe. If you’re feeding a family or just yourself, it’s no fun for anything to go to waste. It also feels silly to buy a million different groceries that are all supposed to make up different recipes throughout the week. So how about if you buy simple, few ingredients that can be utilized across meals, across cuisines, and that you will definitely use all up? Let me do the thinking and planning for you, and introduce you to this dish!

This recipe (or more of an assembly of items) is great for lunch or dinner. It applies to any time of year, where you can roast up whatever is available and in season. It tastes great warm, room temp, or even chilled as a salad. It’s light and healthy, and is great on it’s own or as a side dish. It’s the perfect Sunday set up! However, the best thing about this recipe is that if you store the ingredients separately , the versatility becomes endless. Oh yes - I’m talking breakfast, lunch, and dinner from these items. That’s why it’s the perfect Sunday set up - you can make large batches of the quinoa, vegetables, keep the pre-sliced almonds and the feta on-hand and you honestly subsist on this (plus a few additions, of course!) throughout the week. So what do I even mean by that? Well, have you ever tried quinoa for breakfast? Think of it like a complete protein version of oatmeal. Take your pre-cooked quinoa, sprinkle on some almonds, and then pour on some milk and eat it with fruit. Voila, breakfast accomplished! My mom didn’t know that quinoa is a complete protein (like a meat) so it’s a great way to start the day, just not something that is in the repertoire of most. And how about these using these items differently for lunch or dinner? I am a huge fan of roasted vegetable sandwiches, either with cheese or hummus. How about turn on that toaster oven and stuff a whole wheat pita with roasted veg and feta? Let it toast until melted and crispy. Or make it quesadilla-style with a tortilla on the stove and add some salsa. Lunch is served! And then there is the ultimate combination of everything all mixed together, plus some added EVOO and lemon juice. We gobbled this down for dinner and am looking forward to eating it as a side dish to meats/fishes all week, or having it stand on it’s own as lunch. Another idea is to layer a bowl with the quinoa, then the roasted veg, then your protein of choice and then use some of the almonds to make my homemade spicy almond butter sauce (easy to just grind up the sliced almonds in a blender/food processor if you don’t have almond butter on hand!) - and you’ve got yourself a little Asian-influenced rice bowl.

The opportunities are endless, and I hope this inspires you a bit to do a little meal planning on Sunday so you have plenty of options throughout the week for whatever meal you need.

Happy Superbowl Sunday! I’m rooting for the Seahawks, as my current work has me up working in Washington. I’m flying out there on Tuesday, and I’m sure everyone will be in great spirits if Seattle wins!

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Sunday Set Ups: Quinoa with Roasted Vegetables, Feta, and Almonds (+5 meal ideas!)

 

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Mix roasted vegetables, quinoa, feta, and almonds for a perfectly proportioned salad to have all week.

Author: Dani California Cooks

Serves: 6-8

Ingredients

• 6-8 cups chopped seasonal vegetables of choice (I used beets, broccoli, and brussels sprouts)
• ⅓ cup quinoa
• ¼ cup feta (or more, depending on your cheese preference!)
• ¼ cup slivered almonds
• Olive oil
• Sprinkling of Herbs de Provence
• Salt and Pepper
• Juice of one lemon

Instructions

1. Preheat your oven to 425 F
2. Toss your chopped vegetables in olive oil, sprinkle on a little herbs de provence, salt and pepper and place on a baking sheet
3. Pop in the oven for 45 minutes, or until carmelized and golden. Will depend on the size/type of your vegetables. I roasted my beets and brussels sprouts first, and then twenty minutes in added in my broccoli to the oven
4. While the vegetables are roasting, cook your quinoa on the stovetop. For ⅓ cup quinoa, use 1 cup water. Bring to a boil and then let simmer. Quinoa cooks pretty quickly, so check to see that the little curly-q's are sprouting from the seed!
5. Remove quinoa from stove and let cool
6. Once vegetables are done, toss with quinoa, feta, and slivered almonds
7. When ready to serve, drizzle on some good extra virgin olive oil, more salt and pepper, and a squeeze of a lemon

Notes

My recommendation is to store the vegetables and quinoa separately, and mix together in this salad for when you are ready to eat it. That way, you can use the vegetables in other ways (like recommended above!) and the pre-made quinoa for other meals as well!

This salad will hold up for a week in your fridge.

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