Quinoa and Pumpkin Salad

This post first appeared on Wholefood Mum. 

Quinoa Salad is a very versatile dish. You can pretty much change the ingredients every time and you won't be disappointed.

The salad pictured above has the following ingredients in it:

• 1 cup of quinoa cooked as per the packet directions
• 2 green capsicums
• half a pumpkin- roasted and cooled
• a few handfuls of baby spinach
• some fetta cheese crumbled through it

I mixed a dressing of olive oil, honey, red wine vinegar and ground cumin to serve over it and it was delicious.

These were just the vegetables that I had on hand on the day and next time no doubt it will be a little different. I would have like to include some roasted zucchini as well, but we were all out.

Do you love quinoa? How do you serve it?



*Wholefood Mum is my other blog, but I just don't have the time to commit to it plus Actually Amy and And Sew We Craft so I'll be merging Wholefood Mum and Actually Amy over the coming weeks. 

A Wholefood Lunchbox: First Day Back to School

This post first appeared on Wholefood Mum. Our lunches have changed a little since I wrote these post and I will try and share what they mostly look like now soon. We have also changed to Yumbox lunchboxes. 



It's back to school for us finally. So 5 days a fortnight I have 2 lunches to make per day and the other 5 days I have 3 lunches to prepare.

I want to try and steer clear of the usual sandwiches and try a few different things this year.

We've never been one to include anything packaged or store bought so steering away from the sandwiches shouldn't be too hard.

Here is what was packed in our first lunch box of 2014:

popcorn with goji berries, coconut flakes, 

sesame seeds and sunflower seeds;

carrot sticks, cucumber sticks, kabana, cheese and homemade dip; 

a chicken drumstick

banana 

I'm not sure that I like that the kabana is in this lunch box as it is a processed sausage, so I will most likely swap that out in the future with chunks of leg ham or the like.

Fingers crossed it all gets eaten! My kids are always saying that the never have enough time to eat all their lunch, I don't know what to say about that, because it is so important that they do have a good lunch!

Oh and these lunch boxes are Goodbyn boxes and are available from Biome in Australia or if you are outside of Australia you can check out the Goodbyn website.

What have you been packing in lunches for school? 



*Wholefood Mum is my other blog, but I just don't have the time to commit to it plus Actually Amy and And Sew We Craft so I'll be merging Wholefood Mum and Actually Amy over the coming weeks. 

What whole food means to me

This post first appeared on Wholefood Mum. 

So I thought I would start off by sharing what whole foods mean to me.

To simplify it, it's just food in it's most natural state (where possible). So fresh fruit and vegetables, and food made from scratch at home.

It really is that simple. Now living where we do it is sometimes hard to buy fresh fruit and vegetables, but that has just meant that we have changed a few of the meals to suit what is available in the shops that week. You see we have no farmers markets or green grocers here, just one supermarket chain.

Sometimes it means that we have to resort to canned foods, but that's not a bad thing, you just have to learn how to make do. Legumes and nuts are also a large part of our diet. We only eat meat about 3-4 nights per week and if I had it my way it would be less than that, but that is what works for our family at the moment, so that is what we will be doing.

You can see a sample of what we eat here in my meal plan for Jan/Feb. I'll also be sharing some of the kids school lunches when they go back to school next week.

What does wholefood mean to you?



*Wholefood Mum is my other blog, but I just don't have the time to commit to it plus Actually Amy and And Sew We Craft so I'll be merging Wholefood Mum and Actually Amy over the coming weeks.