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Diet, Diet, Diet, hateful word.  However, this challenge I am doing is nothing like a traditional diet!  I’m not hungry and I get to eat up to 6 times a day!!!  In fact, it’s encouraged.  I have to admit some days I can only eat 5 times.  What in the world kind of diet is this you might ask (and I would too).  It’s from a book called Body for Life and it’s an exercise and eating program.  Yes exercise and you push yourself quite hard.  But I’m a bit of a masochist so I don’t really mind that part.  It’s the sweets part that’s harder for me.  Sweets are limited to one “free” day a week. But I can do this….  Anyway, I had a nice piece of salmon waiting for dinner and I had a grapefruit that I hadn’t eaten yet.  What could I make?

Salmon with quinoa-grapefruit salad of course!  Adapted from the Food network here

  • Peel of a grapefruit
  • sliced ginger (a piece as large as a thumb)
  • olive oil  (3-4 Tb)
  • 1 cup Quinoa

While your quinoa cooks, just like rice 1 cup quinoa, 2 cups water, bring to boil, cover and simmer until water is gone.  Oh, if you get your quinoa from a bulk food section like I do you will want to let it soak in cold water for at least 10 mins and then rinse until the water runs clean.  Otherwise it supposedly leaves a bitter taste.  I’ve never had that happen yet but I always soak and rinse.

Put the olive oil in a small pot and add the grapefruit peel, careful not to get the white pith part, and the sliced ginger.  Bring to just a simmer and turn off the heat.  Let it soak while you prepare everything else.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Separate the grapefruit into segments removing the membrane. You will need at least 3 Tb of juice so make sure that happens as you separate!

Put the Quinoa in a bowl and add chopped scallion (2-3) and chopped cilantro and salt & pepper to taste.

Combine:

  • 3 Tb grapefruit juice
  • 1 Tb rice vinegar
  • 1 tsp agave sweetener (the original recipe says 2 tsp honey)

Whisk together and slowly stream in the oil from the peel/ginger mixture to make a dressing.  I reserved some of the oil mixture to use on some asparagus and on the salmon.  Pour the dressing into the quinoa and mix well. You can add the grapefruit segments to it now, or if you’re like me and have a Jason who doesn’t like grapefruit all that much, add it to your own serving.

I took some asparagus, put it on a cookie sheet covered in foil and brushed some of the peel/ginger oil on it, sprinkled it with salt and put it on the bottom rack of a 400 F oven.  The other rack was 2 down from the top. While the asparagus cooked for about 5 minutes I put the salmon on a foil cookie sheet and poured the remaining oil on the salmon and sprinkled it with about 1 tsp of brown sugar and some salt and pepper.  After the 5 minutes was up, I left the asparagus in the bottom and put the salmon on the 2nd rack.  This cooked for about 10 mins.   Lovely.

It was really delicious. I’m getting the hang of this “clean” eating thing, I probably still don’t have it figured out yet.  But hey, I have one more meal to go tonight!  I’ll leave you with a picture of one of my silly dogs who really wanted, either my attention or a piece of fish!

Fish please.