Sesame, quinoa and carrot salad for a hungry, cake-eating husband

Sometimes wives make cakes. Sometimes they make a lot of cakes. Sometimes husbands kindly taste them and even take them to work in their lunchbox. Sometimes wives are duty bound to provide something a little more wholesome in said lunchbox to counteract the cake.

Enter the lunchbox salad.

They’re becoming a regular fixture. No more sandwiches in the Bell household. We barely know what they are anymore. They’re a distant memory. Quinoa salad though – we know what that is. It’s both delicious and incites a sense of worthiness one can only get from eating rainbow coloured food.

Ingredients:

• 100g quinoa
• 2 large carrots, topped, tailed, peeled and then grated
• 7 sugar snap peas
• 2 tbsp sultanas
• 2 tbsp sesame seeds
• 2 tbsp red wine vinegar
• 1 tbsp sesame oil
• 2 tbsp lemon juice (fresh or the bottled stuff)
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 1 tsp ground black pepper

This is easy. You can make it whilst sterilising bottles, reading Thomas the Tank Engine out loud or even playing hiding behind the curtains. Though you can’t be the one hiding.

Put the kettle on to boil and put the quinoa into a sieve that fits into a nice large saucepan. Then fill the saucepan with cold water. That way the quinoa gets a wash and you don’t have to pick tiny bits of wet grain from a pan. After a 5 min soaky wash lift the quinoa out of the saucepan (in the sieve) and throw the water away. Then put the quinoa into the saucepan (this time not in the sieve) and pour boiling water over it. Enough to come half way up the sides of the pan. Put on a medium heat to boil. I used a lid, but I like to save energy like that you see.

In the meantime take your tupperware lunchbox receptacle and put everything else on the list into it. This works best if you put all the wet stuff in first, then add the other bits and bobs. Give the mixture a good stir with a fork and once the quinoa is ready (the grains look like curls) drain it and add to the mix. Stir and pop something less virtuous on top. Like steak. Or belly of pork. Or in this case a nice piece of teriyaki salmon. Send husband/wife/child to place of work/learning with the lunchbox and a fork.

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