Quinoa & Black Bean Salad // AKA Healthy Chipotle

If you didn't know already, my husband is more of a foodie than I am.  Without him, I might never have tried my new favorite cheese, Brie, or clams (which I now know I am not a fan of).  With all the perks of marrying of foodie - nice restaurants, great food standards at the grocery store, etc. - it has also been fairly challenging.  The restaurant scene is pretty pathetic here and we often resort to traveling to Ann Arbor for a yummy meal.  We are still trying to figure out where is the best place to buy good quality fish; Kyle went to undergrad in Boston where he could get pretty much anything he wanted...our pickings are a little more limited here in Ohio...  And then there's the whole idea of feeding two human beings every night.  Who knew this could be so difficult?!  

Here's an overview of our food personalities:

Jasmin: Eats constantly, worries about calories but disregards the thought of healthiness whenever she feels like it, could eat the same thing every day for weeks (e.g. PB&J for lunch, stir fry for dinner), loves ice cream, always hungry.

Kyle: Doesn't eat breakfast, would prefer not to have the same thing every day, not a fan of PB&J as a staple, can tend to forget to eat dinner, doesn't have a favorite food, likes things that are spicy.

We both agree that we should be trying to watch what we eat for our health (since we both don't really exercise, it's the least we can do) and we try to buy local and/or organic foods.

So my weekly goal: find recipes of foods Kyle will like, they are easy to make (not too many random ingredients that we'll never use again), and not too time consuming (hello, I'm a medical student).  Thankfully, I have Pinterest to help me.  I'm able to see what other random people and friends find yummy, put them on my "board", and then when I have time I can sit down, look at the actual recipes, give Kyle a list of choices, and voilà, we have a menu of new foods to try for the week!  Some have been amazingly successful, others have been rather disappointing, but hopefully we will eventually have a month's worth of delicious foods that we can make at a moment's notice.

Up to this point, I think it's safe to say that our favorite by far is the Quinoa & Black Bean Salad.  It's healthy, it tastes like Chipotle, and if you're a hardcore meat-eater, don't read this next bit: it's even vegan!  We're definitely not vegans...not even vegetarians...but I thought it was worth mentioning for anyone who has ever said they haven't tried a vegetarian recipe that wasn't absolutely delicious.

These photos were taken on my phone, so sorry for the lack of quality shots, but this stuff is so yummy!

So yummy!  Following the recipe, we had enough for leftovers!

We garnished the mix with avocados.

I'm pretty excited for the next time we decide to make this.  I'm thinking about bringing it to a potluck with friends after our final Immunity & Infection exam.  Woot woot!