Picky and Healthy

I have really been loving quinoa lately. (Sidenote: the far and away most popular post on my blog is the one I did about quinoa poisoning, SO many people find it through Google.)

I came across How Sweet Eats’ recipe for Quick Caprese Quinoa with Homemade Basil Oil and immediately wanted to make it. Somehow, though, what I made came out to be pretty much nothing like Jessica’s recipe.

I started by boiling a cup of quinoa. While that was cooking I cut up a pint of cherry tomatoes and a red pepper. Check out the little peppers inside of my pepper.

Then I took about two handfuls of shelling peas, shelled them, and added them in.

I also rinsed a can of cannelloni beans and left them draining for later.

Then I started making pesto.

I used the same recipe I used here, but, for some reason, it came out so oily. So I ended up adding another cup of basil and 2 more cloves of garlic. (I love that this is the third time I’ve made pesto on the blog.)

Yummm, pine nuts.

Once the quinoa cooled I mixed it in with the peppers, tomatoes, and peas along with the cannelloni beans. Then I added a half a cup of pesto, plus a little more.

I served it with a sprinkle of Trader Joe’s asiago/parmesan/romano cheese combination.

Delicious!

And I have plenty of pesto leftover to freeze. Plus, by not adding the cheese until later this is a vegan recipe and I got to give some to my mother!

I think the basic lesson from Jessica’s recipe and my recipe is that quinoa, tomatoes, and basil taste good together. Or that pesto tastes good on pretty much anything.