Quinoa Salad

Two years ago I grew quinoa (see September 2012) - a wonderful and versatile ancient grain.  It's easy to grow and beautiful as well, but treating it for consumption is another matter!  I discovered that it's extremely time-consuming to winnow out the grain and then process it in water to remove the soapy coating.  It was a great experiment, but one that won't be repeated in my garden.  I'll buy it instead!

Today we had a mountain of ham in the fridge and thought a cold supper would hit the spot on this lovely, warm day.  The potatoes aren't ready to dig up yet so potato salad was off the menu.  A quinoa salad,  however, would be just right.  Tomorrow is shopping day, so there wasn't a lot of stuff in the fridge and the garden is just starting to produce, so I made it with what I had on hand.

I cooked the quinoa up with chicken stock and chopped the vegetables fine.  It was tossed with an Asian dressing.

Easy Quinoa Salad for Two

1/2 cup of quinoa
1 cup water
1 chicken sachet

Bring the liquid to a boil, cover and simmer for 15 minutes.  Then turn off the heat and allow to steam for another 15 minutes.  Cool to room temperature, then add vegetables.  I had on hand:

Carrot, red pepper, spring onions, tomato, parsley - all diced.  Cilantro would be great, but I'm one of those people who don't like cilantro!

Dressing:  1 part each sesame oil, honey, soy sauce, 4 parts rice wine vinegar and a dash of hot sauce.  Shake up in a small jar then pour over salad and mix well.  Cool in the fridge for at least an hour.

Okay - only the parsley and onions came from my garden, but soon I'll be able to go there for everything!  And as for potato salad, I have a great one I'll share when the potatoes are ready to dig.

PS - my husband loved the salad!

Quinoa and Black Bean Salad

I made this quick, easy salad to go with the leftover pork tenderloin my husband barbecued last night.  All the ingredients were at hand although my little store of home grown quinoa is just about depleted now.  One of my Apache scallions was a colorful addition and I only needed 1 in place of the 4 called for in the recipe I adapted - they are enormous!  Cilantro would be a natural in place of the parsley I used, but my husband and I are among the unfortunates with whom cilantro doesn't agree.

Quinoa and Black Bean Salad
3/4 cup quinoa
1 1/2 cup water
2 tsp lemon zest
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp sugar
1 can black beans drained and rinsed
2 tomatoes, chopped
4 scallions, chopped
1/4 cup chopped parsley

Cook the quinoa in the water for 20 minutes, then cool.  Mix all ingredients together.  If making ahead, add the tomatoes just before serving.  I removed the seeds and gel from the tomatoes and since my scallion was quite large, chopped it fine.

Kale - The Superfood!

I'm growing quite a few kale plants this year but haven't used it in very many ways other than in coleslaw, in soups and stews, etc.  I've resolved to branch out and use this valuable plant a lot more in the future.  To this end, my daughter-in-law has lent me her copy of "The Book of Kale" which gives lots of information on just how terrific kale is as well as growing instructions and how to use kale.  I'm truly amazed at how jam-packed kale is with goodness!

The other day I served a simple salad of young kale leaves chopped up, apple chunks and a dressing of 1/4 cup olive oil, 2 Tbsp apple cider vinegar, 1 Tbsp honey and salt and pepper.  My husband loved it! Now that's truly amazing because I've always had a problem getting him to eat cruciferous vegetables!

Fresh ingredients for a tabouli salad

My daughter-in-law's book has some wonderful-looking recipes, and today I tried out Tabouli with Quinoa and Kale.  Everything was ready to be picked in the garden except, of course, the tomatoes.  Last year's garlic is starting to deteriorate, but is still better than most of the garlic found in the stores right now.  Likewise, the flat-leaf Italian parsley is starting to go to seed, but there are still good leaves to be found. I picked a variety of young kale leaves - Siberian, Red Russian, Lacinato - and pulled up some of my Apache scallions.  The lovely purple of the base adds colour to the salad.  And even the quinoa was grown in my garden!  The cup required for the salad used about a quarter of my harvest from last year.  No wonder I'm not planning on planting it again!

Tabouli with Quinoa and Kale

2 cups of water (plus stems from kale and parsley)
1 cup quinoa
1 cup minced kale leaves
1 cup minced parsley
2 large cloves garlic, finely minced
1 cup scallions, chopped
2 large tomatoes, chopped

Dressing

1/4 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 Tbsp fresh mint leaves, chopped
salt and pepper

Boil the stems of the kale and parsley with the water for a couple of minutes, then strain out the solids.

Add the quinoa to the vegetable stock, bring to a boil and simmer gently for 15 minutes.  Cool and then add to remaining ingredients except the tomatoes.  Salt and pepper to taste.

Refrigerate for at least 2 hours and add the tomatoes just before serving.  Keeps well (without the tomatoes) for several days.

Quinoa

Today I processed the quinoa.  I wish I'd taken pictures of this, but I was so busy "doing" that there just wasn't time!

Quinoa is one of the valuable ancient grains.  It's related to the humble pigweed and looks very much like it.  I purchased my seeds from West Coast Seeds and started the plants in the potting shed. Once the plants were tall enough, they were transplanted to one of the beds which, of course, had been augmented with compost and homemade fertilizer.  They grew quickly and were kept watered with a drip hose.  To my surprise they topped out at over 6' tall.  I now know that they don't need as much water as I gave them.  When they get too much water they grow very tall and start to tip over.  Indeed, that happened to mine!

They were very attractive plants - sorry no pictures - with frothy red, yellow and orange seed heads.  I watched them carefully as August came to a close and handled the seed heads frequently to see when the seeds were going to start falling.

When I noticed seeds in my hands, I started cutting the more advanced plants and lay the tops out on shallow trays in the potting shed.  When all were totally dry, I stripped the dried flowers and seeds into the trays and put the bare stems in the compost.

The attempt at winnowing wasn't much of a success.  There was a light wind and I poured the mass back and forth, managing to lose some of the chaff - and some of the seeds.  Finally gave up and poured the whole harvest into a huge bowl of water, drawing off the floating chaff as the seeds fell to the bottom.  Okay, mission accomplished.  Now on to the processing!

Quinoa seeds are covered with saponin, a soapy coating which means that birds don't eat them.  It's bitter and unpleasant tasting.  This has to be removed.  I'd read that you can put the quinoa into pillow cases and give them lots of rinses in the washer, but I don't have that much, so I spun them in my food processor with a dull, plastic blade.  Many, many, many times!  And rinsed between processing.  It's a very messy procedure indeed!  When seeds chewed finally didn't taste bitter, I dumped the seeds into a baking tray, spread them out and they now sit in the potting shed to dry.  I could dry them in my dehydrator, but I'm afraid that might be too warm.  I only hope that after all the work I've put in they don't go mouldy on me!

Will I grow quinoa again?  Probably not.  They take up a full bed that could be put to use growing something else.  And all the work involved for about a litre of seeds doesn't seem to be all that worthwhile.  However, if I change my mind, I'm sure there'll be millions of little quinoa plants sprouting up in the garden to choose from!

September Song

This blog is intended for my own purposes - to chart my progress in the garden and help me remember what I'm doing.  I decided to start it in the fall as this is the time for planting garlic - that wonderful, easy and so worthwhile crop!  Most of our gardening is done in concrete raised beds with solid bottoms which drain.  This is because of the cedar trees which insinuate their roots everywhere!  I like my hard work to go to vegetables, not trees.

The Garlic Bed

This year the garlic will grow in a bed that previously was home for quinoa - this year's experiment.  Before that, corn and beans took pride of place, so this would be a good year to grow garlic.  The bed was readied by turning over, incorporating 2 wheelbarrows of compost - complete with red wiggler worms and more turning over and watering.  Finally a good dose of my homemade fertilizer, courtesy of Steve Solomon, was sprinkled over the bed, lightly turned over and raked in.

Garlic Cloves Ready for Planting

Now it was ready for the garlic.  I am growing 2 varieties which I originally bought from Salt Spring Seeds and have now forgotten the name.  Could be Mountain, could be Northern Quebec.  I do know they are lovely big cloves.  One is tall (30 cloves planted) and the other shorter (20 cloves planted).  The whole bed was finished off with a mulch of finely shredded maple leaves and watered in well.  Now I wait until late winter to see the first green shoots breaking their way through.

This year I have also planted some fall crops.  With advice from a fellow gardener, I planted carrot seeds in 6" pots - 9 to a pot) and once spouted, put the whole pot in the ground.  It works extremely well!  Much better success with carrots this year than in previous years.  Beside the last planting of carrots I put in a short row of Fordhook Swiss Chard.  It's a lovely big chard with tasty ribs which is slow to bolt.

Fordhook Swiss Chard and Scarlet Nantes Carrots

Finally, I planted snow peas on a zig-zag fence which is anchored by bamboo canes.  I'm hoping this will be more successful than on woven canes which I set up for my last planting of this variety - Oregon Giant.  Was the name perhaps a give-away that the printed information of 4' tall was perhaps incorrect?  Anyway - gardening is always an experiment, isn't it?

Oregon Giant Snow Peas Almost Ready to Flower

And I finish off with a shot of some of the Copra Onions which have been harvested and are drying in the potting shed.  This year I also grew a sweet onion variety called Candy which is supposed to store well.

Copra Onions Drying in the Potting Shed

Oh, and about the quinoa!  It's one of those wonderful ancient grains and this year I decided to try it.  The plants grew well, topping off over 6' which seems to me quite tall for being grown in what is essentially a container.  Once the seeds started to separate from the frothy yellow, orange and red tops, I cut them and am drying them on trays in the potting shed.  The fun will come when I try to separate the seeds from the chaff - or whatever you call non-seed material on quinoa.  But that's a subject for another day.