30 Minute Meals: Sauteed Kale & Quinoa

As you may know, I am working hard to reduce the amount of animal products and processed foods my family consumes. I just bought a veggie spiralizer on Amazon to make sweet potato and zucchini noodles! It should be on my front stoop today! As part of the meat and carb reduction, I was roasting up all the veggies in my house last week, and I thought to myself, why stop now?! I'll cook everything in my fridge! A little spur of the moment? Maybe. A lot of flavor? Definitely!

Kale and quinoa may be the two trendiest ingredients on Pinterest right now, but for good reason. They are a powerhouse combo! Kale is one of the most nutrient dense foods out there full of calcium, magnesium, vitamin K, antioxidants, fiber out the wazoo... I mean the WORKS! For a vegetable that was once just a garnish for salad bar, it's a staple it in my family's dinner rotation.

Quinoa is one of my favorite foods EVER! It's so diverse and yummy. I make breakfasts with it, I make burritos with it, soup.... Sweet or savory, you name it, I put quinoa in it - the options are endless! These delicious little pebbles are full of iron, b-vitamins, magnesium, calcium, potassium, vitamin e and has all the essential amino acids to make a complete protein. Quinoa is naturally gluten free if that's something you're concerned about. Did I mention toddler friendly too? (Although messy, very messy).

Organic Ingredients:

1 small yellow onion
4+ cloves of garlic
4 tbls olive oil (or coconut oil if you want the trendy trifecta!)
6 cups of ribbed curly kale torn into bite sized pieces
1 cup veggie stock
1/2 cup rinsed quinoa
1/4-1/2 cup Parmesan cheese (or sprinkle on some "nooch" if you're vegan)
A few shakes of red pepper flakes - dependent on your heat preference

Instructions:

I chopped my onion, minced some garlic, and got that cooking in some olive oil. Once that was fragrant, and the onions were translucent (about 5 minutes), I threw in about 6 cups of curly kale with 2 tablespoons of water and covered until the kale had wilted and was tender (12 minutes or so), stirring on the reg.

While that was going, in a separate pot, I cooked up a half cup of the perfect protein, quinoa. To do that, get your stock boiling, dump in your quinoa, cover. Cook on LOW for 15 minutes or until the liquid is absorbed.

Once the kale was tenderoni, I tossed in the red pepper flakes, some Parmesan cheese, the cooked quinoa, and tossed it all together!

Perfect.

I took the leftovers for lunch the next day and it warmed up VERY nicely. What do you take for lunch? Do you have any leftover go-tos?