Vegetable Quinoa Bowl drizzled with Tahini and a dollop of Hummus

It’s been a crazy August and I have no idea where these first 12 days of it have gone!? My mom came into town last week and stayed with us in Rockaway. It was great because a lot of our family were able to visit for the day, so we had a backyard bar-b-que and got to catch up with each other. My Aunt Dawn, the cutie pie that she is, lives in New Jersey near some beautiful farmland, so she brought me some succulent and vibrantly colored produce from one of her local stores. While my mom was in town, there was a lot of eating out, so when she left to go back to Florida (insert sad face – she moved down there almost two years ago), I still had a fair amount of vegetables that needed to be eaten! The more natural the food, the faster it goes bad…

My cousin Danielle’s daughter, Lily, gave the produce her stamp of approval.

I know I talk about the benefits of quinoa every time I blog about it, so I won’t go into too much detail, but if you’d like to read more about it, you can revisit this post Quinoa Burgers or this post Pantry Essentials. All I’ll say is quinoa is a complete protein and a perfect little seed for all people to eat, but especially those who don’t eat animal products. And an added bonus, it takes just 15 minutes to cook, so I chose quinoa over brown rice for this dish. I happen to love the combination of sweet potato and tahini, so whenever I add this adorable orange root veggie to my recipes, I tend to pair it with a little tahini. The recipe is completely gluten free, oil free, and delicious.

Ingredients:

• quinoa (I used a 16 oz bag)
• 1 large sweet potato
• about 1 1/2 cups cut up string beans
• 1 tomato
• hummus (store bought or homemade – check out my recipe page for some great hummus recipes)
• about 2 Tbsp tahini
• optional: lime

Steps:

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Peel the sweet potato and dice it into about 1/2 inch cubes. Add to a baking sheet and place in the oven.
2. Since the string beans take less time to cook, let the sweet potato cook for about 15 minutes before adding the beans to the baking dish. Cut off the ends and cut each string bean into thirds. Place in same baking dish and cook for another 20-25 minutes.
3. If the quinoa did not come pre-rinsed, soak it for 15 minutes and then drain it. Use a 1:1 1/4 ratio of quinoa:water, so for every cup of uncooked quinoa, use 1 1/4 cups of water. Add the quinoa and water to a pot on medium/high heat. Once it comes to a boil, cover and simmer for 12 minutes. Turn off the heat, and let it sit, covered, for five minutes. Then, uncover and gently fluff with a fork.
4. Chop the tomato and put aside until the quinoa and vegetables are tossed together.
5. Toss together the quinoa, sweet potato, and string beans, and top with tomato, hummus, a drizzle of tahini, and a squeeze of lime. Enjoy!