Cold Quinoa Salad

So, this was my first time EVER cooking with cumin...so I was excited to try this recipe out! I took a lot of steps in making this recipe because I used dried black beans that were soaked & then cooked before I even started the actual recipe. Doing this will eliminate any additional sodium when buying the canned black beans & of course...who wants their food sitting in an aluminum can that's lined with BPA! Sounds yummy to me! lol

Here are my black beans soaking! You can get these (and similar carbs) for super cheap if you buy them in bulk at Whole Foods or another health food store. 99% of the time organic!

And this is the finished product! The original recipe called for red peppers, but Casey & any type of peppers don't get along, so I substituted them with tomatoes. This is a cold salad, by the way!

Ingredients

3 cups cooked quinoa (this is approx 1 1/2 cups of dried uncooked quinoa)

1 cucumber, diced

1/4 cup onion (I LOVE my sweet Vidalia onions!)

1 cup corn

1 cup cooked black beans

1/4 cup olive oil

3 tbsp lemon juice

1 tsp salt

1 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp cheyenne pepper

3 tbsp cilantro (I didn't have any at the time & substituted the cilantro with parsley)

And MIX!!!! lol

I never figured out how many cups it made, so it would be hard to give any sort of individual nutritional information. However it made a lot! Casey & I had about 2 cups ea & then I had enough for 3 smaller servings for leftovers. The entire recipe does have 3,063 calories (a tad over 1,000 coming from the quinoa), but the great news is is that it has NO bad points!!!

Enjoy!

xo,

Nancy