from somewhere in my imagination

What's For Dinner? - Quinoa Tabbouleh with Chicken

Since we moved I have been more about 'getting by' than doing new things in the kitchen...there have been a few new things here and there but nothing that I think is inspired enough to have shared, with the hot weather in Adelaide last week a 'fancy salad' served with some meat off the BBQ was our staple.

Late last year I guest posted for the lovely lovely Diminishing Lucy with this Quinoa Tabbouleh, it's yummy and nice and light for anyone counting calories :)  The perfect sort of thing for a warm summer evening...I'm sure that someone is having one somewhere in Australia this week because it's not Adelaide's turn!

Over the years I have heard quite alot about quinoa, often hearing it referred to as a 'superfood'.  As much as I love food I can be a bit reluctant to try new things, in case they taste awful!

I recently (finally) tried quinoa for the first time and am a total convert!  It is expensive compared to other grains (I'm talking $6-$7 for 500g at the supermarket...look in the health food section) but a little goes a long way.

After cooking up my first batch I quickly had ideas for plenty of other ways to use it.  I'll definitely be using it as a substitute for rice in dishes like pilaf and sushi and it's also a great replacement for cous cous.  I don't think my family would notice if I served it with curry instead of rice and I'm pretty sure I could get away with replacing it as the side to stir fry.

For my first experiment I 'replaced' the cracked wheat you would normally use in tabbouleh and incorporated chicken to make an 'all in one' warm salad.

Quinoa Tabbouleh with Chicken - Serves 4, 320 calories/serve

 

Ingredients

150g (raw weight) quinoa

300g Chicken Breast, preferably free range

50g Low Fat greek yoghurt

1 tsp Sumac

1 punnet Cherry tomatoes, halved

 2 lebanese cucumbers, peeled and cut into batons

1 large, wholemeal pita bread, toasted in hot oven for about 7 minutes until golden brown.

Leaves from 1 bunch flat leaf parsley, washed well.

Juice of 1 lemon

Method

Mix together the yoghurt and sumac, use to coat the chicken breast and set aside while you get started on the quinoa and chop the tomatoes and cucumber.

Cook the quinoa in water according to the instructions on the packet.  Be careful not to overcook it because it will get a bit mushy.

Drain the quinoa and leave it to cool.

Heat a grill plate or the barbecue and cook the chicken breast.  Leave aside to rest.

Wash the parsley well and pick the leaves from the bunch.

Toast the pita bread in a hot oven until golden brown and crispy.

In a large serving bowl mix together the tomatoes, cucumber and quinoa.

Add the chicken, parsley and lemon juice.  Finish with the broken up pita bread and season to taste with freshly cracked pepper.

Serve to the table, divide into serving bowls and dig in.

Hope you give the keen-wah a go and enjoy it as much as we did!

Tatum xx

Every Boy's Dream

A couple of weeks ago I taught my first class as a guest teacher at my local scrapbooking shop, Seriously Scrapbooking, it's kinda exciting that I have one after all these years!

I enjoyed a lovely Saturday afternoon with the ladies that came along.  Thankyou :)

I put together October Afternoon Rocket Age papers with some Imaginarium chipboard, added a few buttons, a lot of twine and a touch of stitching and took things to outerspace with some embossed alfoil...and the perfect double was born for a photo of S in his astronaut suit together with photos from our morning at the Udvar Hazy Air and Space Hangar.

And some detail...I had visions of those rolls extending right across the page but just that amount took pretty much a whole sheet of paper!

I have been busy working on some projects for Etzcetera Magazine, the new issue is out in the next few days...I've had a peek at the cover and it is gorgeous!

I managed to squeeze in one just because in the last little while and am finally on the downhill run as far as studio organisation goes.  Just need to get my husband into action with his drill to hang a couple of things on the wall for me that are too heavy for command hooks ;)

I made this one with a recent Studio Calico kit.

...and on that note I am going to finish watching Packed to the Rafters and pull out some paper and glue :)

Happy Days

Tatum xx

 

 

Spinach & Pumpkin Cannelloni #AllBran

Earlier in the month Kellogg's released All Bran Fibre Toppers, along with a group of other bloggers I was invited to try out a box and see what recipes I could create with it...the carrot being an opportunity to win sponsorship for BlogHer '12, it's in New York and we all know how I feel about NYC!

We have spent the last few weeks testing Fibre Toppers out with some good result.

Our kidlets love yoghurt but we have a rule that they are not allowed to eat just yoghurt for breakfast, they have to have it with cereal...usually that cereal is muesli and we end up with half eaten bowls.  We all tried Fibre Toppers on yoghurt with 100% positive results, they are kind of light and crunchy and really are perfect with a bowl of fruit and yoghurt in the morning.  A 25g serve of fibre toppers also provides around a third of the reccomended daily adult intake of fibre.  Winner.

This was actually my dessert sometime last week, greek yoghurt teamed with cinnamon & vanilla stewed nectarines finished off with Fibre Toppers.

Next Lauren, Jess and I tried them sprinkled on a salad.  They are great for adding to a salad to add a crunchy element without the calories you would get from something like nuts. 

Chicken + Nectarines + Baby Spinach + Snow Peas finished with a serve of Fibre Toppers and splash of balsamic vinegar and dinner was served.

The Fibre Toppers are a little on the sweet side so they are better suited to savoury dishes with slightly sweet undertones...if that makes any sense at all?  For my 'main' dish I decided to incorporate the fibre toppers into a vegetarian cannelloni.  The result was delish, Sebastian gobbled it up without even commenting on the fact it was choc full of vegies.  Jasmine was a little suspicious (as is the nature of a two year old) but the rest of us cleared our plates.

Spinach & Pumpkin Cannelloni - Serves 4-6 people

Ingredients

500g Japanese pumpkin

250g Frozen spinach, thawed

250g Ricotta

1 Egg

1 Bunch Spring Onions, cleaned and chopped

1 packet 12 fresh Cannelloni sheets

700mL bottle tomato passata

1Tbs Olive Oil

1 Cup finely grated parmasen chees

1 Cup + 1/2 Cup All Bran Fibre Toppers

Method

Peel and dice the pumpkin into 1" dice, pop it into a baking tray with the olive oil and plenty of freshly ground pepper.  Roast at 180C until soft, check after 30 mins leaving a little longer to make sure it is nice and mushy if neccesary.

In a large bowl mix together the roasted pumpkin, spinach, spring onions and ricotta until well combined.  Add the egg and 1 cup of fibre toppers and mix until just incorporated.

Pour about 1/3 of the bottle of passata into the base of a large baking dish, spreading it out to cover.

Roll about 2 large tablespoons of the mixture into each of the cannelloni sheets and place them with the join facing down into the baking dish.  Repeat until all the sheets have been used.

Pour the remaining passata over the cannelloni and top with the parmasen cheese and Fibre Toppers.

Bake at 180C about 25-30mins until the top is golden and the sauce is bubbling.

Seriously Good.  Love that crunch factor that the Fibre Toppers give it...along with the knowledge there is some extra of that all important fibre in there for us!

There are plenty of other bloggers who have been posting their recipes using All Bran Fibre Toppers, check out the Twitter #AllBran hashtag for lots of great ideas!  One of my personal favourites would have to be Glow's Pistachio Dukkah Chicken Schnitzel...seriously genius (and I love that she spells schnitzel properly, winner)!

I've got plenty more ideas on how to incorporate the fibre toppers into our meals...but I'm going to have to tuck them away for another day...I somehow managed to spend about 4 hours on my feet in the kitchen today and, whilst I'm pretty organised for meals and lunchboxes this week, I'm pretty knackered!

Tatum xx