Quinoa Salad with Dates, Nuts and Goat Cheese

It’s getting a little bit silent over here… Maybe I’m just strange but summertime seems to be a holiday period for my BBQ too… With an average of two times BBQ a week in the other seasons it appears to be a lot less now… Is this a bad thing? Hell no! There are some verry good reasons (only interested in the recipe? Jump to the bottom):

I’ll take this weekend for example. We started on friday with a supper at my dad’s place. The kids had a lot of fun playing with their cousin. Since the weather was fantastic, we saw some possibilities to go for a ride with our new bicycles. Since we had to wait over a month we were longing to use them again. We decided to eat some healthy, light but powerful food for dinner and leave early to explore “Den Westhoek”. The recipe following at the bottom of this post was made by my lovely wife. The pictures were made with my new camera (another toy to play with). Saturday evening we were celebrating the birthday of my girl’s grandmother. What an indulgence when she’s treating with tapas from the restaurant “Tapa Tapa” (our favorite). This restaurant is situated in Alveringem but they provide a catering service too! We ate the eight tapas menu and were once again astonished by the slow cooked squid. It’s hard to describe how great they taste. We also ate their “PRESA DUROC BATALLÉ with Salsa verde , Pimientos del Padrón”. Delightful! The Pluma they normally use is even better!Expect this Pluma one day over here! It’s nr.1 at my BBQ Bucketlist!! Today we went for a ride again with the intention to end the weekend with Chicken Skewers on the BBQ. While cycling from the “Palingbeek” to “Ieper” and back, we encountered Ieper’s Fun Fair, ate some Ice Cream and enjoyed the environment (a little to long). We got verry hungry and decided to forget about the skewers and Wok the Chicken. Fast meal served. Will I have more time next week? Forget about it! Music al weekend long starting with Asaf Avidan’s gig at the Dranouther festival I told about here. And completing the weekend with this awesome festival: I’m looking forward to finally see Overkill, Venom, Armored Saint, Powerwolf and Wolf. But bands like Queensryche, Death Angel and Accept never let me down in the past. Sabaton has a chance to prove me they still got the magic from the early days (they seemed to have lost it on Graspop last year). What a weekend. Anyway I don’t think I’ll eat as healthy as this great Quinoa Salad: Ingredients:

Quinoa
Apple Juice
Nut Mixture
Goat Cheese
Dates
Raisins
Parma Ham
Honey
Salt and Pepper

Preparation: As you can see I didn’t add the amounts to the ingredients. You can make this Quinoa Salad at taste! Some like it fresh other like it a little bit sweeter, some like more nuts, … It’s up to you but these ingredients combine excellent! Start by boiling the Quinoa. Instead of using water we used the same amount of fresh apple juice. Meanwhile roast the nuts in a hot pan. Cut the Dates in big pieces and add some raisins. Put these ingredients all together in a large bowl and stir some honey into it. Serve with pieces of goat cheese and Parma Ham.

Easy, healthy and delicious! When we find some more time (or have some other priorities) we’ll try this salad again replacing the Parma Ham by the Smoked Pork Cheeks I made some time ago! I’m sure they would be a great match!