I am glad the weekend is here, 5 day work weeks are brutal after a blissfully long Thanksgiving weekend! The weather is still crazy, freezing cold rain most of the night and snow flurries today!
Enough to stick around our patio for a bit until the sun came out and melted it away.
Pretty rare for the Sacramento area and it was gorgeous. I love this area because we never have to deal with snow, but it’s just a short drive into the mountains when we do want to play in it. Shadow was not impressed at all with our mini snow storm and slept through the excitement.
I have not been grocery shopping since before Thanksgiving and our kitchen is looking really bare. I got a little burned out after all the planning, shopping, and spending and was happy to take a break and use up what we had. But my lunch was a little strange today, I made a fresh salad with walnuts, carrots, and chopped red pepper with a fresh made lemon tahini dressing because I didn’t have much else on hand!
We finally stepped out for a little shopping since Smokey has been yelling at us all day.
She was a little unhappy about the cat food feeder being empty, whoops!
And we grabbed some groceries from Whole Foods while out. Whew, more fresh produce for the week!
Tomorrow I’m doing something slightly insane and had I known what the weather was gonna be like with record low freezing temps, I probably wouldn’t have agreed to this. I’m running the California International Relay challenge with my sister and a couple of her friends. And I have the longest and hilliest leg of the relay at 7.5 miles, yay. And temps are supposed to be in the low 20s with plenty of frost. I’m still trying to figure out what to wear and will probably be layering multiple pairs of running tights and a thermal running turtleneck under a running tee. Along with gloves and ear warmers, yikes.
Since quinoa seems to be my lucky pre-race food, I decided to create another warming quinoa one-pot meal for dinner using a spice I have not used in awhile – cardamom.
Butternut Cardamom Quinoa
- 1 cup quinoa, rinsed
- 1 medium butternut squash, skinned, seeded, and chopped
- 1 leek, chopped
- 1/2 tsp. turmeric
- 1 tsp. fresh ground ginger
- 1 tsp. sriracha sauce
- 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
- 1 tsp. ground cardamom
- 4 cups water
- salt and pepper to taste
Bring quinoa and water to a boil in a large pot. Reduce heat to medium and stir in butternut squash, leeks, turmeric, ginger, cinnamon, sriracha, and cardamom. Cover and simmer over medium-low heat for 25 minutes stirring occasionally until loose liquid is absorbed. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve and enjoy. Makes 4 servings.
Throwing one-pot-meal stews together is just fun being able to toss in more seasonings to taste as it’s cooking and my go to on chilly evenings.
I topped a heaping serving with nutritional yeast and a little smokey seasoning for a warming and savory dinner. The cardamom added a smokey and savory flare to the quinoa and simmered nicely into the butternut chunks.
It was a perfect warming dinner to prepare for the insanity tomorrow morning!
Hiya! Snow!? Well, I’m already sick of it! LOL Then again I LIVE in the snowbelt! We have some ice issues today, actually!
The dish looks wonderful :)
Smokey is sweet! Love the MEOW Face :) We have a similar food dish – I think it’s an older model tho – it’s blue and a bit narrower but more tall :)
I am not liking this cold weather lately!! But this dish would warm me up for sure, looks great!
Yeah, it’s been an adjustment here with freezing temps already, the snow flurries were wcrazy and our chihuahuas hate going outside in the cold.