Recipes: Super Healthy Ice Creem And Quinoa Veggie Salad & How To Have A Greener BBQ

With the weather getting hotter  I wanted to share two recipes with you. One is for ice creem that especially my 4-year old loves and the other one, quinoa veggie salad, is a great dish to bring to BBQs and potlocks.

Oh, as you know English is not my native language, so please excuse any mistake that I might make/have made, but this is NOT a typo - I decided to call it creem instead of cream since there's no dairy in it. As always my recipes are vegetarian or vegan if you substitute the honey.

For the Ice Creem you'll need:

* 1 ripe avocado

* 1 banana

* 1 cup fresh or frozen strawberries

* honey or other sweetener, depending how sweet you like it

* pop molds (and here we go again with the plastic... I haven't found an alternative for this one yet!)

Put all ingredients in a blender, mix it all up and fill in the molds This amount makes about 4 molds for us. Sometimes we just eat it out of a bowl; oh, and that IS an alternative to the pop molds!

As always you can add anything you want to hide in there or change ingredients as you like.

I always use avocado but switch the fruit depending on what I have at the moment.

Enjoy!

For about 8 servings of the Quinoa Veggie Salad you'll need:

• 1 1/2 cup quinoa (can get at Whole Foods and most supermarkets)

• about 3 cups of chopped vegetables that can be eaten raw (garlic, onion, pepper, cabbage, carrots,... - whatever you have)

• salt and spices to taste

• 1 tbs balsamic vinegar

• 2 tbs olive oil + a little extra to heat up

• 1 cup raw cashews

In a large pot, heat up a little olive oil and add spices that you like (I love cumin for this dish). Add quinoa and mix with the olive oil mixture.
Add the water and cook quinoa according to directions (usually in double amount of water, until water is absorbed and quinoa soft).
When all water is absorbed, add the chopped vegetables and mix well.
Take off the oven and add the balsamic vinegar, olive oil and salt and/or other spices and herbs and combine.
Can be served warm or cold. Great to bring to potlucks or parties!

Enjoy!

Alma from Take Back The Kitchen talked to me about this dish for her column at Baristakids 
Check out the video:


And here are some ideas for greener parties and BBQs:

• Try to avoid disposables such as silverware, plates and cups - especially if you don't have a huge amount of people
• If you feel like you must use disposables, think about buying biodegradable items (you can find them at most supermarkets, even CVS is selling some)
• Can you do without plastic? Come up with creative ideas how to avoid plastic wraps (think cloth & rubberband?), ziplock bags (reusable containers?), plastic water bottles (reusable stainless steel or glass) etc. etc. Plastic is everywhere, and gets everywhere. Avoiding is the best strategy to not being exposed to harmful chemicals that might leach into food/drinks, especially when the plastic gets hot in this kind of weather.
• Bring and offer local foods