Sarah's Quinoa Salad

Imagine opening your email to the recipe below!
That's just what happened to me the other day.  It's from my neighbor whose name is.....gee....wanna guess?  The title has the hint:)
There was a bit of a beet craving in this house recently...and then this came along.  My substitutions are in red.  Although I had good intentions of using kale, I already had a huge bag of spinach for green smoothies...and....I just couldn't buy more greens at the same time I'm trying to use up this humongo/giganto bag of spinach.   She did mention hers was a bit salty, so I didn't add any salt when roasting the vegetables but instead adding it at the end (my fine Sicilian salts made it incredible). 

QUINOA & GOLDEN BEET SALAD

1.5 C quinoa

3C vegetable broth

2 golden beets (~2C total), diced into 1/2" pieces regular pink beets

olive oil

salt and pepper

1 bunch kale chopped, tough stems removed spinach

1/4 C pine nuts omitted (just didn't have any)

1/2 C shelled edamame I always almost always have some in the freezer...but did not this time so it was omitted

1 tsp tarragon

Dressing

Raspberry vinegar

Olive oil

1/4 lemon

1 clove garlic, crushed

1)  Preheat oven to 400.

2)  Soak quinoa for 15 min.  Rinse, drain, and add to 3 C vegetable broth.  Bring to boil, simmer for 15 min.

3)  *If edamame is frozen:  When quinoa is nearly done, add frozen shelled edamame to cooking quinoa.

4)  As quinoa soaks and then cooks, toss diced beets with olive oil and  pepper.  Place on cookie sheet and roast for ~15 minutes.  

5)  When beets are almost done, add kale to baking sheet and toss with beets to get coated in oil and pepper.  Roast for another 10 minutes or so.

6)  When veggies are nearly done, add pine nuts to a corner of the cookie sheet.  Roast for another 5 minutes or until golden brown, stirring around occasionally.

7)  To make the dressing, I added 2 Tbsp or so vinegar, plus about 1/2 C olive oil, garlic, and squeezed the 1/4 lemon into a vinaigrette shaker and shook to mix.

8)  Add quinoa to a large bowl.  Toss w/ vegetable mixture.  Season with tarragon and add as much dressing as you wish ( I ended up using about half).

Sarah's note: Enjoy!  Even the kids loved it!  Eric loved the edamame.

A couple things I did:
Added a handful of golden raisins and a sprinkle of feta. This is a great base for many vegetables, so it will appear on this blog again!  Way to go, Sarah!

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