Southwest Quinoa Salad w/ Spinach

It's after midnight and I just finished making and devouring this salad. I do feel a little bit guilty for eating so late, but in my defense it was a healthy salad and I just couldn't help myself. I was text messaging all night with a friend whose mother has to go on an unprocessed diet and was having to eat a lot of brown rice. I suggested trying out quinoa and shared with her my tropical quinoa granola recipe and fried quinoa (think fried rice) recipe. The more we talked about food, the hungrier I got. Then I went to the kitchen to take a picture of the bag of quinoa I use so she could see what it looked like and before I knew it I was scooping some out to cook. I had no idea what I would add to it since we haven't gone to the grocery store since last week! After some rummaging, I had a pile of ingredients and started to chop my veggies and cook the quinoa. Then my heart fell as I realized I didn't have any lemons for my dressing (I was going to make a simple lemon/olive oil dressing). But a bottle of white wine vinegar that was tucked way back in the corner of my cabinet saved the day. As I cooked, I kept sending my friend pics and she will now be making this tomorrow since she also has all the ingredients. You probably do too!!! It's so easy and yummy!

Note: 1/2 cup of uncooked quinoa will make about 1 cup of cooked quinoa. Those tiny little things expand quite a bit! 

Grab it:

FOR THE SALAD:

1 cup cooked quinoa, cooled

1 can of black beans, drained and rinsed

4-5 stalks of scallions, sliced

1 small red bell pepper, seeded and diced

spinach leaves

2 large handfuls of frozen corn (I did not defrost it, see #2 below)

half of a tomato, seeded and diced (I would prefer grape tomatoes, but I was lucky to even have a tomato on hand!)

salt and pepper, to taste

FOR THE DRESSING:

white wine vinegar

olive oil

Make it:

1) Cook the quinoa: boil 1/2 cup quinoa with 1 cup of water in a small sauce pan with a lid. Once it starts to boil, simmer for 10-12 minutes until the water is all gone and the quinoa has puffed up and has little "white tails". 

2) Allow the quinoa to cool. If you are making this last minute, spread the hot quinoa on a plate and toss the frozen corn with it - it will cool the quinoa down quickly and the heat from the quinoa will defrost the corn. I'm so smart! lol

3) Combine all the salad ingredients except for the spinach in a large bowl. 

4) I didn't measure the amount of vinegar and oil I used, but used a rough 1:2 ratio of vinegar to oil.  If I had to guess, I used about 3 Tbsp of white wine vinegar and 6 Tbsp of olive oil. Whisk (or in my case I used a fork) together until mixed well then drizzle over salad and toss salad.

5) Place spinach leaves on a plate and top with salad mixture. Enjoy...and try not to eat the rest of the salad.

this was the whole dish...it made a lot! I'm sure nobody will miss the midnight snack I had when it's time for lunch tomorrow (or rather today!)

*** UPDATE *** I had every intention of adding feta cheese to this dish last night, but I got totally caught up with trying to find a replacement for the lemon for the dressing that I totally forgot. So today for lunch I topped my salad off with some feta. It was delicious, light and yet very filling!!! Oh, and my girlfriend made hers this morning and she kept texting me and saying she can't stop eating it! lol