I decided to go for a warm salad this week. We’ve been pretty busy around here. Tony has been hanging drywall in our new to us house. I am doing the painful task of breaking out a shower pan that I built and starting over. I am definitely not a great cement layer. However, I got some new things that will make creating the new one easier. Let’s hope. This means, time intensive recipes are not a good idea right now. I typically grocery shop and meal prep on Saturday and cook on Sunday. For the Sunday meal, I’ll have all of my veggies prepped and anything I can pre-cook. That way Sunday there is minimal prep.

Since this recipe is a warm salad, I can prep most of the ingredients ahead of time. I am using a recipe from Half-Baked Harvest for Fall Harvest Quinoa Salad. This salad has a lot of healthy things going for it. Good protein and plenty of vegetables, but the nutrition profile is heavy on the calories and light on the vitamins. I also want to add a little meat too and skip the cheese. I also may change the squash type too. The same flavor profile, just more vitamin rich ingredients. Here are the original stats:

Here’s what I changed:

• I deleted the haloumi because Tony wants to avoid cheese right now.
• I cut the salt in half to reduce the amount of sodium.
• I cut down the amount of olive oil for roasting by half to reduce the calories.
• I replaced the acorn squash with butternut to increase the vitamin A.
• I replaced the baby kale with regular kale for vitamin C and because it’s easier to find.
• I removed the pomegranate because they are also hard to find.
• I removed the maple syrup to reduce the sugar and calories.
• I added in some poached chicken breast to add protein.
• I increased the servings from 6 to 7 to reduce the calories.

Here are the final stats:

Here is the final recipe:

Fall Harvest Quinoa Salad

Serves 7

For the salad

• 1 cup uncooked quinoa
• 200g butternut squash, cut into 1 inch cubes
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon Ground Cinnamon
• pinch of Ground Cayenne Red Pepper to taste
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• Pepper to taste
• 1 pound Kale, chopped
• 1 apple cored + thinly sliced
• 1/4 cup toasted pumpkin seeds or roasted pistachios
• 1 pound poached chicken breast, chopped

For the dressing

• 1/4 cup tahini
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• pepper to taste