I'll Wait For My Quinoa To Be Fully Grown Next Time

The vegetarian kick continues.

Spousal Unit decided to be creative and buy kaniwa -- which is marketed as "baby quinoa" -- instead of the regular quinoa. According to The Internets, kaniwa is The Next Great Thing in ancient grain superfoods. Because we need more superfoods to combat the supervillains that are overrunning Gotham City.

I like regular quinoa. It's a bitch to clean and cook, but it makes for a nice summer salad. Kaniwa, on the other hand, is just kinda revolting. It's tiny, mealy and bleuch.

Mush

This kaniwa salad was made with chick peas, which is everyone's favourite legume to shove into a quinoa salad. In case you aren't savvy to the whole vegetarian thing, you need to find your protein somewhere, and quinoa and chick peas are "excellent sources" of protein. Plus the softness and mellowness of the chickpeas is a nice contrast to the nuttiness, and slight crunchiness, of the quinoa.

Adding chick peas to kaniwa, however? Ugh. Because kaniwa is so small and mealy, the whole dish becomes a grainy, mushy mess. Plus kaniwa doesn't taste of anything. So eating this salad was like eating tasteless, sandy mush.

I'm lobbying to have the remaining package of kaniwa thrown away. Or, alternately, I can send it to you so you can try it out for yourself. If you exist.