Southwest Quinoa Salad & Marinated Cucumbers

I cooked way too much quinoa. Partly because there were other recipes using the grain that I wanted to try - one was the "As-You-Please Grain and Bean salad" on pg. 70 of the New Vegan cookbook. It's a mix-and-match recipe which is a super handy format for using ingredients on hand. With fresh cilantro in the fridge, I went the SW route using: Quinoa, Black Beans, Baby Corn, Sunflower Seeds, Red Onion, Cilantro, Sesame Oil, Wine Vinegar, Sea Salt, & Tamari. Lorna's "menu" consists of 6 categories: The Basics (3 C. cooked grains & 1 C. cooked beans, For Crunch, For an Herbal Accent, For a Pop of Intense Flavor, For Color Contrast, Oil, Acid, Seasoning. You choose items from each category to create your own unique salad. I love this concept.


When I blogged about getting the cookbook, Gourmet Vegetarian Feasts by Martha Rose Shulman, KleoPatra commented that she had the cookbook and wanted to make the marinated cucumbers on pg. 130. This got me thinking about the cucumbers my mom used to make when I was young. I have tried unsuccessfully to make them several times, so I was happy to have a recipe to follow. I cut the cucumbers differently though; my mom would cut them in circles leaving the seeds, and mine are spears with the seeds removed. It's a nice summer side dish to have in the fridge because it tastes better the longer it marinates.