Quinoa stir-fry

Guess who cooked again?
...
waits for guess
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okay fine, I'll get on with it.

This time I made stir fry with quinoa. I'm not really sure what quinoa is, except that it's kind of like couscous and is a rice-like grain. Anyways, I started out by sauteing my veggies in about 2 tb of butter.

Said veggies: white onion, red onion, red bell pepper, and squash 

I ended up not using the green onions, tomato, and yellow cherry tomatoes because I had originally planned on putting them in a quesadilla but found out that I had no cheese. So quinoa  stir-fry it was.

Veggies cooking. Added a tad salt and pepper

Now, the quinoa bussiness...

I'm not the best chef, you see, I don't know how to cook quinoa. Somewhere online said to do 1 parts quinoa to 1 and 1/2 parts water. so I did that except to make it more flavorful I used chicken stock instead of water and let me tell you, that was an excellent choice. however, it seemed like that wasn't enough water so I added a bit more liquid, let it absorb, and let sit for 5 minutes. Then, I stirred in my veggies and added some corn from the freezer for sweetness. Now, let me tell you this is excellent and you can cook it in less than 30 minutes easily. I'm not even a fan of peppers or squash, but in this recipe I liked them.

um.. soup and salad (I need to think of better names for my creations)

I cooked *big wet eyes brimming with pride*

First, not too fancy, just a salad

Isn't she beautiful?

She was Whole Foods inspired. One day it was too hot outside to do anything so my mom and I decided to go there for entertainment and look at all the pretty foods we can't afford and take as many samples as possible. But anyways they had this arugula, red onion and corn salad.

So mine is arugula, lettuce, corn cut off the cob (because it's better that way), shallots, red onion, and I think that's all. I wanted Olive Garden dressing because it's da bomb wtf so I tried to make my own and adapted copykat's here. btw I just want to point out that I was very proud of myself for figuring out how to make the link go into just "here" instead of having all the bogus wtf.
I didn't have all the ingredients so I just left out the Romano cheese (replaced with freshly grated Parmesan), Italian seasoning, parsley flakes, lemon juice and sugar. wtf that's alot of ingredients left out but it still tasted good. I think I threw in some oregano, rosemary, and regular Italian dressing to make it a bit better. And I used more garlic, which is always a good thing. However, this dressing doesn't taste like Olive Garden's at all really to me (maybe with right ingredients), but I still liked it.


My other baby: I made this soup with Trader Joe's 10 beans mix or something like that. It's just a super colorful mix of beans in the bulk bins. However, I didn't know how to cook them and they were underdone even after 40 minutes cooking. But they added a nice flavor and the rest of the soup was good. I put in half an onion, some celery, four or so potatoes thinly sliced, and I can't remember if there was anything else. I cooked  them with the beans in chicken stock and as it cooked I put Colby Jack cheese in. My great Aunt Nena taught my mom this trick. It thickens the soup and also just makes the flavors all go together so much better. I usually also have a side of grated cheese so I can sprinkle even more on while I eat it. Sooo good.