Blueberries

After our hang gliding adventure we stopped at a private farm on the way home and picked some blueberries.  It was $6 for a bucket of the little blue wonders and it took three of us about 30 min to pick that many berries.  Absolutely worth the time and sweat (it was noon on one of our 100 degree days here in Georgia).

With so many berries in the house I wanted to make sure they were used and didn't get thrown away - it would have been a shame to waste fresh as can be blueberries.  Of course we've been putting them on our Greek Yogurt every time we eat it, but it was obvious that we weren't going to be able to eat them all that way and I started looking for fun recipes for them.

Source: Want What You Have.
My cookies looked exactly like this when they came out of the oven.

The first one I found was for Blueberry Cookies.  OMG.  They are amazing.  Check out the recipe on the Want What You Have blog.  The cookies lasted about 3 days in our house and they were gone.  I got about 24 cookies out of the recipe, not 3 dozen like she did.  The next time I make these I may add some sliced almonds to see how they taste.

The next recipe was for Blueberry Muffins.  Growing up, blueberry muffins were our weekend treat, Betty Crocker style.  You know the ones, with the can of small blueberries included in the box.  Delicious, but not homemade.  I found a recipe on Allrecipes.com and found the To Die For Blueberry Muffins Recipe.  With over 5700 reviews/ratings and a 4.5 Star rating, I had to give them a shot.  Stephen and I may have devoured all 12 muffins in one day.  (The recipe says to make only 8 large muffins, but I went ahead and made 12 regular muffins.)  I'm glad I went for a run Saturday morning!  The only change I made use Coconut Oil instead of Vegetable Oil.  Scrolling through some of the 500+ photos that have been uploaded for the recipe, I noticed that not everyone added the the crumb topping.  PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU ADD THE CRUMB TOPPING.  It's the perfect touch to the perfect muffin.  I only used about half of what the recipe makes because all of my muffins had a nice cover of the mixture.

Do you have any blueberry recipes that you love to make?  We still have about 2 cups left!

Quinoa Seafood Salad

Yes, another post about Quinoa, but I can't help it, it's so good!  I found a recipe on Pinterest that I had to try, the original recipe is called the Superfood Salad with Lemon Vinaigrette.  Superfood it is!  I made a quite a few adjustments to the recipe but click here to see the original- totally worth it.  I want to give credit where credit is due - I never would have made my version of this salad without Iowa Girl Eats.

Superfood Salad with Lemon Vinaigrette from Iowa Girl Eats 

We didn't have all the ingredients to make the dish, but we substituted and it was still amazing.  We cooked the quinoa as directed and I used chicken broth (I was out of chicken stock) for the liquid.  I made double the quinoa needed for this recipe so we have it already ready to go for tonight's meal.  Half a cup uncooked quinoa in this dish is about 4 servings because of all of the other stuff added in.  I had the can of black beans, so we were good to go there.  I also didn't have frozen corn or pomegranate arils or orange.  Yes, the recipe was basically just a guideline for me at this point.  I used canned corn, rinsed and it worked just fine.  In place of the pomegranate arils I used some fresh blueberries that we picked ourselves over the weekend at a blueberry farm.  Nothing beats fresh blueberries.  We didn't have anything to substitute for the orange, but the dish was fabulous without it.  Will try to remember an orange the next time we buy avocado.  Everything else we had on hand.

We did mix in some shrimp to the dish and loved it.  Stephen was in charge of the shrimp and he cooked it in a very little bit of bacon grease and lemon juice, pepper and garlic powder.  Once it was done he removed it from the heat and added a bit of milk to the pan to make a rue.  Then he put the shrimp back into the pan to coat.  We added the shrimp to the quinoa mixture and he squeezed a large lemon over the dish while I mixed everything together.  Because we had that to mix in, we didn't make the lemon vinaigrette in the recipe.  I liked the dish without olive oil.

Overall, the salad was amazing.  Where most of my meals with quinoa have had quinoa as the main ingredient, this dish was an mix of so many flavors.  The quinoa coated most of the other ingredients, but was definitely just a supporting cast member.  I absolutely can't wait to get home to have the leftovers.

Here are the ingredients that I had in my Quinoa Seafood Salad:
1/2 cup dry quinoa
1/3 cup red onion, chopped
1 avocado, chopped
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 can corn, rinsed
couple handfulls of fresh blueberries
1 lemon squeezed, more to taste if necessary

For the shrimp:
1/2 lb shrimp
one lemon
small amount of bacon grease, enough to coat the bottom of the pan only
splash of milk
pepper
garlic powder

Cook the quinoa as you normally would, let it cool while you cook the shrimp.  Once the quinoa is cool, mix in all the ingredients then add the shrimp.  Mix in juice of half the lemon.  Stir to coat.  Mix in the juice of the second half of the lemon.  Serve room temp or cold.