Quinoa Summer Salad

It's has been an incredibly warm week / long weekend and I've been Barbecuing a ton! I still love making my Hamburgers but I wanted a healthy side option to go with them. This is were a quinoa salad comes into play! You were probably thinking I was going to say something Lentil based but I'll save that for another week ;)

This quinoa salad has a light basil-lemon dressing and it almost gives it a slight lime flavor.




Ingredients (Salad):
1 - Cup of Quinoa (precook and cool a head of time)
1 - Can (341ml) of Chick peas (drain and rinse)
1 - Can (341ml) of Corn (drain and rinse)
1 - Orange Bell Pepper (diced)
1 - Avocado (diced)
2 - Plumb Tomatoes (or Vine tomatoes patted down with a paper towel)
2 - Green Onions (diced)


Ingredients (Dressing):
2 - Tbsp Extra virgin olive oil
5-8 - Fresh Basil Leaves (diced)
Juice from one Lemon
Salt and Pepper to taste

(Quinoa not shown as it was already cooking)

Directions:
If you haven't done it already, start with cooking the quinoa. Normally I would use Chicken stock but I didn't want the quinoa to pick up any extra flavor so I cooked it 2 Cups water to 1 Cup quinoa.

Put the Chick peas, Corn, Pepper, Avocado, Tomato and Green Onion into a large bowl. Take a pretty picture and then mix it all together.

In small bowl, mix the olive oil, lemon, basil, salt and pepper.

Pour the dressing over the salad and mix again. Refrigerate for 30 minutes to an hour to let the flavors combined.

Serve as a healthy side with your favorite main :)

You'll have a fair bit of the salad leftover so you can eat it on it's own for a nice light lunch or you can put it in a soft Tortillas shell to make a wrap