This recipe is quickly becoming one of our favorites for outdoor cookouts, potluck gatherings, and overnight camping trips. It can easily be made in advance, tastes great leftover, and is sure to please any crowd. A little over a year ago we would have been adding a bag of chips or pasta salad (made from white flour) to our cookouts, but now that we’re on the real food bandwagon we go for this whole-grain option instead. If you’re also interested in cutting out processed food and refined ingredients then check out our family’s 100 Days of Real Food story as well as our list of favorite recipes and meal ideas.
(pronounced keen-wah)
Cilantro-Lime Quinoa
Ingredients
Salad
- 3 cups cooked quinoa 1 cup dry
- ¾ cup dried fruit we used a mix of raisins golden raisins, chopped dried apricots, and dried currants
- ¼ pine nuts toasted
- ¼ cup cilantro chopped
- 1 bell pepper of any color diced
Dressing
- ¼ cup lime juice
- ¼ cup olive oil
- 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
- 2 garlic cloves minced
- Pinch of salt
Instructions
- Mix all salad ingredients together in a large bowl.
- In a separate, smaller bowl whisk together all dressing ingredients.
- Pour the dressing over the salad and mix thoroughly.
- Can be stored in airtight container in the fridge.
Lisa Leake is a wife, mother, foodie, and blogger who chronicles her family’s journey on 100daysofrealfood.com as they seek out the real food in our processed food world. Projects include a 100-day pledge to avoid all processed foods and refined ingredients, another 100-day pledge on a food stamp budget, and 100 days of real food mini-pledges where readers are challenged to cut out processed food one week at a time. Leake’s award-winning blog is receiving national attention from big names like Rachael Ray and Jamie Oliver and was recently turned into a nationally syndicated newspaper column.