Roasted Root Veggies with Quinoa

When the weather turns cold I turn up the heat in the kitchen naturally by roasting veggies. All you have to do is cut them up, rub with salt, oil and your favorite warming spices. Add them to a protein rich superfood like quinoa and now you have a hearty main dish.

Set your table with a variety of hearty, warm, protein rich entrees from the plant kingdom. Few will notice if anything is missing.

Ingredients:

2 sweet potatoes

3 carrots

1 small pumpkin

4 blue potatoes

3 onions

1/4 c of oil needed in stages

1T smoked paprika

I T basil

1 lb. organic white quinoa

salt to taste

handful of peeled almonds

Roasting pumpkin, sweet potato and carrot are the first step in making the quinoa dish but I make extra to roasted veggies to enjoy on their own.

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 400 F. Cut off outer skin of pumpkin, take out seeds and reserves seeds for roasting separately as a cooking snack. Cut pumpkin, carrots, sweet potatoes into small pieces. Rub with olive oil, salt and paprika and spread across baking sheet.

Cut onions into wedges, blue potatoes into cubes, rub olive oil salt and basil on veggies and spread on baking sheet. Put them both in oven for about 15 minutes until brown on one side. Turn over each piece making sure other side is coated with oil from the baking sheet and cook another 10-15 minutes .

Measure how many dry cups of quinoa are in your bag and take note as you will add twice as much water for cooking. Meanwhile rinse quinoa thoroughly. I use a large wire mesh strainer and the handheld sprayer on my sink. This is a long rinse to remove a natural bitter residue from the outside of the grain. Be thorough or your quinoa will not taste good.

Add quinoa to as much boiling water as needed a 2 cups of water top 1 cup of quinoa ration. Simmer for 10-15 minutes until the grain appears soft and translucent. Peel almonds by pouring boiled water until the skin slips off.

Place quinoa on first layer of a large serving bowl, then layer potatoes, carrots and pumpkin. Place inions in center and top with blanched almonds.