yum.

Drew and I have been working on incorporating more and more vegetarian meals into our regular food rotation both from a cost standpoint, and from an ethical one. I’ll spare you the majority of the soapbox rant, but the gist is that if we’re going to be eating meat, I’d like to know as much as possible about what the animal’s life was like leading up to it’s turn on my plate, and that knowledge comes at a slightly higher cost. Rather than going broke on this point, or compromising our food values, we’ve just decided to go halvsies and eat vegetarian about half the week. One of the meals that we made this week was a Quinoa “Risotto” that was so daggone good I thought you might like to take it for a spin too.

I modified it from this recipe (also the source of the picture above as I was too quick with the fork to snap a picture when we actually ate it.)

Quinoa Risotto (Learn more about the awesome grain that is Quinoa here)

4 cups cooked quinoa (make sure to really season it with lots of herbs etc while it’s cooking, makes it extra tasty)
1/4 cup pecorino romano or parmesan…something salty and stinky.
14 oz tomato sauce, homemade or canned, work with what you have.
1/4 cup of vegetable stock (We buy a jar of Better Than Bouillon that lasts quite a while for the cost. I recommend that.)
veggies! I used onion, eggplant and cauliflower, because that’s what I had, but any veggies that you have on hand will work. Chop them up.
clove of garlic, minced
salt, pepper, italian herbs
zjush of olive oil

Cook your quinoa according to directions on the package to yield 4 cups. In a medium sauce pan, heat olive oil, add veggies and garlic, sautee until starting to soften, add tomato sauce and veggie stock and bring to a boil. Add cooked Quinoa, cover, and let bubble for another 5 minutes. Serve into dishes and top with cheese. I highly recommend doing a really coarse grate/thin slice of cheese because it then gets all gooey and cheesey and life gets a little better. Generously serves 4.

There you have it! A very affordable main course in under 15 minutes. Yum.