Quinoa Stir Fry with Lime Fennel Capers Salad.

Even though no posts, I've been doing the cooking, often times trying to delight a boy who kindly eats what I make... I guess not so much the bean soup, but that was pretty terrible. It is apparently a fact that dry beans take more than an hour, or four, to cook. He ate five spoonfuls of uncooked beans. Come over, I will feed you bean soup. It wasn't even soup at many points because the water kept disappearing - I don't know where it went, it clearly was not being absorbed... oh well, good thing he's really great.

Anyways, last night my wonderful friend came over to play boggle and cook. We didn't actually get to play boggle, but if we did I would have won. But we did cook.

New favorite: fennel. During a vegan/ gluten free feast*, someone made an incredible meal that started with a fennel salad with oranges and olives and maybe something else. I was going to recreate this and take credit, however I forgot to buy oranges and guess I don't have any olives.
* I don't approve of so many self-imposed food restrictions. I think if it exists it should go in my body.

Fennel Salad:


One Fennel bulb
Capers
Lime
Italian Dressing.
Spinach
Salt

Chop the white part of the bulb, pull off some of the leaf like parts, maybe a little of the stemies. Juice one lime, throw in like three roughly chopped fork fulls of capers. Do not use the Italian Dressing. Italian dressing is so stupid. It tastes like chemical juice - always. Throw in some chopped spinach - not baby, grown up? Put on as much salt as you can handle and you have some greatness.

Stir fry:


Chop one onion (have your friend do it)
Chop a head of broccoli
1/2 Red Bell Pepper
Garlic
Spinach
Peanut Oil
Soy Sauce
Honey/cumin/ "ar-cha-cha" hot sauce

Throw the onion in a large pan with peanut oil (should have been sesame oil, but I drank all my sesame oil). Saute for a couple of minutes then add broccoli. Saute saute then add... chopped garlic, like a bunch. Not the most precise dish. Then add half a red pepper chopped in little chicklet sized pieces. Add soy sauce. Add cumin and a little honey. More soy sauce.

Now turn off the heat and add the spinach, let it wilt.

When you add the spinach, you should add edemame to the boiling water, which I guess you should have started. Drain the edemame after like four minutes and add rock salt. Oh, also, you should have already cooked your quinoa - like 1/2 cup of dry quinoa with a 2 to 1 ratio... 1 to 2? Twice as much water as quinoa. Quinoa is the greatest food ever. I typically make the red quinoa, but this is only because if I make the white my roommate can't stop making jokes about it looking like condoms.


yumm