last minute kind of dinner...

So tonight I needed to make a last minute kind of dinner...so I looked around for what we had...my mom had pulled steak out and a sweet potato, so I needed to get creative.  I decided to make a sweet potato quinoa salad, just throwing in a little bit of this and a little bit of that.  If you never had quinoa before you should definitely give it a try, its great!!  Its similar to a rice but much more grainy...you cook it like rice though...it looks like this before its cooked...

After all of the water is dissolved it gets pretty fluffy, and looks like this...

Quinoa is pretty boring on its own, so I boiled a white sweet potato (the white ones are a little sweeter than the orange ones) and I toasted some walnuts...just throw them on a pan at 350 and watch them, they will start to look "toasted" but make sure you don't over toast them or the oils will become rancid...yuck

After the potato is boiled and the walnuts are toasted throw them in with the quinoa...for a little color I added some dried cranberries (it added a little sweetness too!).  If you have fresh basil that is best, but all I had on hand tonight was dried, so I threw that in there.  Its always good to make a dressing for quinoa since it is kinda dry...I just emulsified olive oil and balsamic vinegar and then added a little agave nectar for sweetness.  For the steak I just did it on my George Forman grill, it was really easy especially on days like today where its a monsoon out there!!  To make it quick I just rubbed them with some Smokehouse Rub from Williams-Sonoma of course! =)  And for another quick veggie I just chopped up some cucumber and added dried basil, olive oil, and apple cider vinegar.

And the finished product looks like this...

You can do this in under an hour!  Super quick!!