Quinoa – the new Superfood!

Quinoa, while still considered a niche food, is becoming increasingly more popular throughout North America. It’s nutritional properties are incredible, it’s easy to cook and can be incorporated into so many of your favorite dishes. It’s gluten free and is an excellent protein source, so it’s suitable for all types of diets, including vegan, vegetarian, meat eating, weight loss, and high protein diets.

Some of the nutrients you’ll find in quinoa are:

Riboflavin, calcium, vitamin e, iron, potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, folic acid, and beta carotene. One cup of uncooked white quinoa has a whopping 24 grams of protein, 12grams of dietary fibre, and only 8mg of sodium.

Quinoa is also a complete protein that provides you with all the essential amino acids necessary for human growth and development.

It’s available in whole grain, flakes, and flour. And can be used is a variety of dishes like soups, stews, as a substitute for rice, and for baking.

I’m a big fan of quinoa, so you’ll be seeing lots of recipes on www.rawandfresh.com that feature this versatile superfood!

Stocking up on Staples

I’m finding that some of the ingredients we use on a regular basis are either hard to find at the grocery store, or way too overpriced.  Add organic to the label and you’re looking at paying an additional $2.00 for a can of tomato sauce or coconut milk.

One of the places I’ve found that has a good selection of organic staples is Costco.  The organic tomato sauce is $9.99 for a case of 12, instead of $3.99 a can.  They also have organic coffee beans, organic frozen veggies (corn, peas, and green beans for around $7.00 for a 1 kg bag.  The fresh produce is not the best, as most is imported from mexico, but they do have organic baby carrots.

If you go through a lot of soymilk like us, Costco has organic original Silk in a 3 carton pack for $9.99.  They also have organic sprouted grain breads for 1/2 the price you pay at the supermarket.

For us it’s definitely worth making the trip to Costco every few weeks to stock up on some of these basics.

Fast food!

I was in the city today with my daughter and found it hard to figure out what to have for lunch.  Since cleaning up our eating habits and eliminating most of the preservatives and additives from our diet, I haven’t had to think about fast food.

Our choices were very limited, so we decided that the Bread Garden was our best choice.  They had a few choices of salads and filos, but we settled on a vegetarian burrito. It was wrapped with a spinach wrap and had beans, potatoes, carrots, corn and some kind of lemony curry flavor.  It tasted ok, but left me wondering what was really in it.  Next time we head into the city, I’ll be sure to plan ahead and pack a bag of fruit and homemade wraps.