Quinoa Salad

Serves 6-10

1 1/2 cups red quinoa
1 sweet onion
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
3 tablespoons white wine vinegar
3 tablespoons dijon mustard
1 medium apple, diced into 1/2"
1 medium pear, diced into 1/2"
3 celery stalks, diced
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup diced strawberries (about 5 medium)
4 ounces spinach

Dice the onion. Heat a saute pan over medium-high heat with a little bit of olive oil. Once the pan is hot, stir in the onion and cook until lightly brown for 5-7 minutes. Then pour in the balsamic vinegar and cook until most of the liquid evaporates (no more than a minute or so). Remove from the heat and let cool.

In a large bowl, whisk together the white wine vinegar and the dijon mustard. Stir in the diced apple, bear, celery, cranberries, and strawberries. Stir in the cooked onions as well.

Now it's quinoa time. Rinse the quinoa with water, running your fingers through it for a few seconds. Strain out the water and put the quinoa in a large pot. Pour in 2 1/2 cups water and to a boil over medium-high heat. Then reduce the heat to medium low and let simmer, covered, until the quinoa is tender but still has a little bite to it, should take between 10-15 minutes.

Take the quinoa off the heat, pour the spinach in the bowl with the vinaigrette and then pour in the still warm quinoa and stir to incorporate everything. The heat from the quinoa will make the spinach soft and make the other flavors come together. You can eat this salad warm or cold because it's great both ways.

If you're a fan of a little extra heat, I like to put some thai chile sauce around the plate and then mound the salad in the middle of the plate so when you start eating, you get a little chile sauce in every bite.

Drunken Fruit Salad

I decided to cook myself a festive Rick Bayless inspired meal tonight and so I created this special fruit salad. The great thing about this recipe is that you can use any fruit you have lying around or any fruit that you like the best. I wanted to mix a little fall flavor with Caribbean flavor so I used a combination of watermelon, mango, pear, and apple. This turned out to be a very refreshing side and my new favorite fruit salad.

1 pear chopped
1 apple chopped
1 mango chopped
3 cups watermelon
1 lime juiced
2 tablespoons torn mint
1 tablespoon (more if you like) of tequila

Place all of the ingredients into a bowl, mix, and refrigerate until you're ready to eat it. It's that simple and the combination of the mint, lime juice, and tequila creates a margarita like macerating liquid. The other variation that turns out nice is to create a ginger and mint infused simple syrup

1/2 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons mint
2 tablespoons ginger

Bring all ingredients to a boil, remove from heat, and cool in a container for at least 24 hours to let all the flavors infuse.