A few weeks ago, AK and I visited his sister (a fellow gluten-freenik) and brother-in-law; Saturday we had a pretty lazy morning (read: slept in very late :)) and decided lunch should be light fare, mostly salads. I whipped up this quinoa salad with chickpeas, chopped pecans, and raisins for lots of texture, and a simple vinaigrette of apple cider vinegar, curry, ginger & cardamom.
Quinoa Salad w/ Curry-Ginger-Cardamom Vinaigrette
Ingredients:
1 cup of quinoa, cooked according to package & cooled
1 can chickpeas, drained & rinsed
1 scallion, chopped
1/4 cup raisins
1/4 cup chopped pecans
3 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 Tbsp olive oil
2 tsp honey or agave
1/4 tsp sea salt
1/4 tsp curry powder
1/4 tsp cardamom
1/4 tsp ground ginger
pinch of garlic powder
pinch of pepper
Directions:
- In a salad bowl mix together quinoa, chickpeas, scallions, raisins & pecans.
- Blend together remaining ingredients and pour over quinoa mixture, stirring to combine.
The cost:
quinoa: .99
chickpeas: .69
scallion: .10
raisins: .40
pecans: .40
Grand total: $2.58; serves 4-6 as a side dish (recipe is easily doubled for a larger group)
nice recipe, but the cost isn’t really accurate since the high ticket ingredients like honey, olive oil, apple cider vinegar, cardamom, sea salt, and all the other powders were left out. Having done this from scratch, the real cost is around 9 dollars if you don’t have all these exotic things just lying around the kitchen…(this estimate takes into account the fraction calculation of the ingredients from above). If you are calculating from scratch on whole bottles and getting started costs, it gets around 15-16 really quickly, but i think the cost per dish goes down the more times you repeat this dish with the same ingredients from the original bottles/packets
Hi Jaya,
Thanks for the comment. You are absolutely right that this cost estimate assumes you have some ingredients in your pantry. I explain my methodology for estimating costs here: http://chosenbites.com/2009/09/penny-pinching-tip-1-simple-bare-necessities/
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