quinoa tabbouleh and a few things you don't know about me.

Last week Robyna from The Mummy and the Minx had a few kinds words to say about me on her blog.  As part of the same post, she wrote a list of things her readers didn't already know about her.  We've been mates since high school, but there were a few surprises amongst the list even for me.

So in the interests of full disclosure (and having something to chat about) here's

five things you don't know about me.

1.  I'm allergic to koalas.  This doesn't pose a big impact in my daily life now, but it did prove a problem when I worked at the Zoo (many moons ago).  Turning my mic off to sneeze became a unintentional comedic aspect of my presentations about these eucalypt smelling marsupials.

2. I thought "intents and purposes" was "intensive purposes" until I was thirty. This was a rude shock.  I'd been saying it wrong all that time and no one had corrected me.  It was like learning I'd walked the length of the Queen Street Mall with my skirt tucked into my pantyhose.  Incidentally, I once saw a woman walking down Queen Street Mall with her skirt tucked in her pantyhose, I ran like the wind to catch her and alert her to her overexposure.

3. I once held the world tiniest chameleon on my finger. Back in 2004 I travelled to Madagascar for a conservation project.  Walking out of the rainforest one day, we came across the weeny lizard.  It was one of the highlights of my trip.

4. My boobs feature in a music video.  If you've been reading this blog since the very beginning, there's a chance you know this already.  If not, here's all the titillating details.

5. For several months of 2012, I mispronounced quinoa.  Now the whole world knows it's said keen-wa, but for a few months I was committing the culinary fox paw of pronouncing it kwin-o-a.

Since quinoa became the seed de jour, people have been putting it in a whole lotta places were it just doesn't belong. Chocolate banana soft serve with quinoa? Step away from the thermomix, man!  The overload has become so dire, I'm up nights mentally drafting a cease and desist letter to the creator of quinoa fudge.

Quinoa is a good grain alternative (even Bearhands likes it) but just because you can put it in everything doesn't mean you should.  That said, here's my buggerised version of tabblouleh where I swapped out the burghal for quinoa, because #superfood.

quinoa tabbouleh

Ingredients:

• 2 cups water
• 1 cup quinoa
• 1 pinch salt
• ¼ cup olive oil
• ½ teaspoon sea salt
• ¼ cup lemon juice
• 3 large tomatoes, diced
• 1 lebanese cucumber, diced
• 10-12 spring onions, finely sliced
• 1 cup fresh parsley, chopped

Method:

Bring water to a boil in a saucepan. Add rinsed quinoa and a pinch of salt. Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for 15 minutes. Cool to room temperature; fluff with a fork.

Meanwhile, in a large bowl, combine olive oil, sea salt, lemon juice, tomatoes, cucumber, green onions and parsley. Stir in cooled quinoa.

what's your stance on quinoa?

tell me something about you that I don't know!

*Thanks to Eliz a Buf for pointing out that quinoa is a seed, not a grain.