Warm Quinoa Salad with Roasted Vegetables

I was loving the whole quinoa salad thing and decided to try making a warm, savory, quinoa salad.  I harvested and incorporated an eggplant from my container garden into this dish.  However, I think the eggplant could've grown a little bigger.

I stabbed holes throughout the skin of the eggplant because that's what I had learned from roasting eggplant when I was younger.  But I think it might be for when you're roasting eggplants whole.  We would throw the entire eggplant directly onto the burning charcoal of the fire to roast.  We did this for a dish called tortang talong, which is roasted eggplant, skins peeled, flesh flattened down, dipped in scrambled egg, and fried.   I will go over that in another blog post/video.   I cooked the eggplant first  in my video because it takes longer.

It turned out great.  This recipe reminded me of fried rice because everything is all mixed into the dish.  But it made so many servings, I was eating it for days and I'm kind of tired of quinoa now.  It'll be a while before I make something else with quinoa.  If you'd like to try this recipe, see below.

Ingredients:

• 2 eggplants, cut into 2-3 inch pieces and stab holes throughout skin to allow heat to cook through
• 1 cup quinoa, rinsed
• 2 cups water (for cooking quinoa)
• 2 teaspoons chicken bullion paste
• 1 zucchini, chopped
• 1 red bell pepper, chopped
• 7 mushrooms
• 1 yellow onion, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 10 chicken meatballs, chopped
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar

Instructions:

1. Prepare ingredients as indicated above (cut, stab, chop, mince).
2. Air fry eggplant for 30 minutes at 400 degrees.
3. Rinse quinoa.  Place in pan.  Add water and bullion.  Bring to a boil. Turn heat down to simmer and cover.
4. Remove cooked eggplant, cut into bite-sized pieces, and add to cooked quinoa.
5. Air fry zucchini, bell pepper, mushrooms, onion, garlic, and meatballs for 20 minutes at 400 degrees. The add it to the quinoa salad and mix.
6. Add olive oil and balsamic vinegar to quinoa salad and mix well.
7. Enjoy!

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IG post of this video: Warm Quinoa Salad with Roasted Vegetables (sped up for IG)
YouTube post of this video: Warm Quinoa Salad with Roasted Vegetables (regular speed, full video)