Quinoa veggie saladย with lemon pesto sauce makes for an easy 30 minute plant based meal. Dinner doesn’t get easier than this!ย
Just the other day I committed the ultimate travel faux pas. I took us to the wrong airport and then we missed our flight.
Well to be fair it was the right airport, just a different terminal that happened to be 22 km away, and we didn’t quite “miss” the flight, we got there 35 minutes before the flight but were no longer allowed to check in.
And so instead of getting in to Penang, where we’re renting an apartment for a month and half at 3:30pm we didn’t get in until just past 10, after a series of buses, metro rides and cabs.
Oh and all the wasted money.
What a mess.
Most upsetting though? We took the train to the airport and if we had just gotten there six minutes earlier we would have arrived 20 minutes earlier (since we would have caught a different train) and just made it through check in, even with going to the wrong airport.
Only six minutes.
It’s going to take me a while to get over that one.
So to make myself feel better, what did I do?
Make quinoa.ย More accurately I made this quinoa veggie salad to make myself feel better. That always helps, right? Food is the medicine? I say so, even if I created a mess for us myself, I still felt terrible about it!
My mom brought me a bag of quinoa to Australia since I had been living quinoa free for months as I couldn’t find any in India, Nepal or Thailand and I’ve been carrying that bag around with me since mid-January. It was time to break it out for an uplifting meal aka this quinoa veggie salad recipe.
So I tossed that together with some veggies (tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, mint, scallions, pea sprouts) and drizzled it with a lemon and pesto concoction. One of my new favorite plant based meals; this quinoa veggie salad comes together in under 30 minutes and is bursting with fresh flavors.
Let’s talk sprouts for a minute. I personally love all sorts of sprouts – alfalfa might be my favorite, but I’m also down with broccoli sprouts, pea sprouts, you name it. In this quinoa veggie salad I opted to use pea sprouts as they are a bit more heartier and firmer than alfalfa sprouts, and they add this crunchy pleasing green veggie into the mix. As for herbs, you could add all your favorites to this quinoa veggie salad like basil, cilantro, etc, but I only had mint on hand so that’s what I went with. Mint is the best herb in my opinion, it adds just a refreshing kick into any dish and just bring a salad to life immediately!
This quinoa veggie salad is perfect for a simple meal. Let me know what you think of this recipe in the comments below!
Quinoa veggie salad is a simple meal full of flavors. Gluten free, dairy free and vegan. Dinner ready in under 30 minutes!
- 4 cloves of garlic minced
- 1 cup quinoa
- 1-2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 2 small cucumbers quartered and sliced
- 1 bunch mint chopped
- a few green onions chopped
- 1 package cherry tomatoes quartered
- 1 small red onion thinly sliced
- 1 lemon zested
- a bunch of pea sprouts chopped
- 1/2 lemon juiced
- 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
- 2 tbsp pesto use vegan pesto for dairy free version, or vegan version
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Heat oil over medium heat in a pot and add garlic. Cook until just aromatic and add quinoa. Lightly cook until just toasted. Add 1 1/2 cups water or stock to the quinoa, bring to a boil, add salt, reduce heat and simmer, covered until cooked through (15-20 minutes)
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In a small bowl combine pesto, lemon juice and 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil.
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Once quinoa is cooked add all remaining ingredients to the quinoa pot and stir until mixed through.
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Serve hot.
Simone says
Oooo I feel for you! It is one of my worst nightmares to miss a flight. Any flight… So I always go early but then there is always stuff outside of my control; traffic, other peoples schedules and such… We almost missed one once in turkey as we were there for work and everyone kept saying we would make it on time, but they never took the traffic into account…. We made it in the end but it took som effort and lots of running in airports. I hate running in airports… But this dish would certainly help to get over it!
Vicky says
Good thing you made that flight! It really was such a stressful day. Will definitely be getting to the airport way earlier now (so that if I mix up the airports again at least I’ll have a time buffer to get to the correct airport!)
Ansh | Spiceroots says
Oh No!! Did they at least refund the tickets? I am glad you at least made an uplifiting meal. Makes it feel a little better.
Vicky says
Nope not at all. We were flying with AirAsia so the tickets were super cheap as I had gotten them in advance but they wouldn’t bump us to the next flight and said we would have to buy all new tickets, which were incredibly expensive since it was the day of.
Amy says
Looks delicious! Want to make this.