Sautéed Kale & Quinoa

I am working hard to reduce the amount of meat and processed carbs my family consumes. I just bought a veggie spiralizer on Amazon to start making sweet potato and zucchini noodles! It should be on my front stoop today! As part of my meat and carb reduction, I was roasting up all the veggies in my house last week, and I thought to myself, why stop now?! I'll cook everything in my fridge! A little spur of the moment? Maybe. A lot of flavor? Definitely!

Kale and quinoa may be the two trendiest ingredients on Pinterest right now, but for good reason and they are a power house combo! Kale is one of the most nutrient dense foods out there full of calcium, magnesium, vitamin K, antioxidants, fiber out the wazoo... I mean the WORKS! For a vegetable that was once just a garnish for salad bar, it's a staple it in my family's dinner rotation. 

Now quinoa is one of my favorite foods EVER! It's so diverse and yummy. I make breakfasts with it, I make burritos with it, soup... You name it, I put quinoa in it. Sweet or savory. These delicious little pebbles are full of iron, b-vitamins, magnesium, calcium, potassium, vitamin e and has all the essential amino acids. And naturally gluten free if that's something you're concerned with. Did I mention toddler friendly too?

Organic Ingredients:

1 small yellow onion

4+ cloves of garlic

4 tbls olive oil (or coconut oil if you want the trendy trifecta!)

6 cups of ribbed curly kale torn into bite sized pieces

1 cup stock (I used chicken, but veggie stock is also great for the vegetarians & vegans)

1/2 cup rinsed quinoa

1/4-1/2 cup Parmesan cheese (or sprinkle on some "nooch" if you're vegan)

A few shakes of red pepper flakes - dependent on your heat preference

I chopped my onion, minced some garlic, and got that cooking in some olive oil. Once that was fragrant and the onions were translucent (about 5 minutes), I threw in about 6 cups of curly kale with 2 tablespoons of water and covered until the kale had wilted and was tender (12 minutes or so), stirring on the reg. 

While that was going, in a separate pot, I cooked up a half cup of quinoa-the perfect protein. To do that, get your stock boiling, dump in your quinoa, cover. Cook on LOW for 15 minutes or until the liquid is absorbed. 

Once the kale was tenderoni, I tossed in some red pepper flakes, some Parmesan cheese, the cooked quinoa and tossed it all together!  Perfect.

I took the leftovers for lunch the next day and it warmed up VERY nicely. I like to have leftovers like this for lunch because man is it easy for me to eat garbage at the office.  

ENJOY! 

Em