Mango Quinoa Salad

via ourbestbites.com

Last night was one of our meatless dish nights and we had this AMAZING dish. Actually, I had a list up of all the dishes I was going to make this week and told him that he could pick whichever dish he wanted since it was his first day of school meal, and he picked this one. I'm pretty sure this one had the most produce in it out of them all. He even came grocery shopping with me yesterday (note, don't go grocery shopping on holidays, parking was redic) and with this dish, a few others that needed produce, and some things for school lunches, Ryan mentioned that he thought this was the most produce he'd ever seen in our cart. I take it as a compliment, especially since my number one goal with this whole being pregnant thing is for Ryan not to gain weight with me. Not that it's be a terrible, awful thing if he did, but hey, it's one less person who has to lose weight afterward.

I digress.

We had this salad and loved it. We just ate it meatless, but Our Best Bites put some grilled chicken with it, which looks divine as well. The nice part too is that I had a bowl full and Ryan had two but it's not super heavy and you feel the perfect amount of full-ness. The only bummer was that our mango wasn't super ripe, so I added a can of drained mandarin oranges to it to make it a bit sweeter. Also, I used a green bell pepper, cause sometimes I'm cheap like that, which I'm sure would have added to the sweetness a bit. Oh, and we added not as many green onions. So go with it and made additions/substitutions as you go, The dressing was fabulous and as Ryan was eating this he said to me, "We're making this again." Love when that happens.

Also, this was our first time eating quinoa. I know, you'd think we'd have eaten it ages ago, but really, couscous and arborio rice was as fancy as we had gone grain wise (other than white/brown rice). It was a cinch, so quick and easy. I just cooked it in water since there was a dressing on the salad, but i'm sure beg/chicken broth would be even better. Also, I didn't rinse the stuff, but go ahead and do that if you want. Mine came in a fancy little organic bag, so I didn't feel the need, but if I got the big container from Costco or something, I'd probably rinse them off just to be sure. Sara, from our best bites does a quinoa tutorial too, and cooking it takes 15 minutes, tops.