opalescent

Yesterday the clouds were high, thin and the sunlight made everything glow. We spent the whole weekend outside, working. Snipping. Digging. Planting. I don't usually listen to music in my earphones, but the others were elsewhere and it was just me, watching my busy neighborhood, gloved fingers in the mud. I fetched the ipod and this song came on and oh. oh!

I can't possibly replicate the emotion in that moment, the visceral response to something so beyond the tangible. Like dreams. Like sex. Like dreams about sex.

I want to think it was the combination of hard, dirty work plus beautiful music, but it might have been just one, or the other.

chocolate quinoa cookies

These are the givens: 1. we eat a lot of quinoa 2. I am not a good cook, per se, but I kick some off-the-cuff cooking ass. So it's a little surprising that it took me so dang long to throw something like this together. Cookies! Made from quinoa!

Back up the truck a minute. If you're not eating quinoa, I implore you to eat quinoa. It's been my go to grain of choice for a good decade. I use it in lieu of rice or pasta or other starches in many dinners. I'm probably preaching to the choir here (a funny phrase, that.) and *you* likely know all about this wondergrain, but in case you don't: Quinoa is the only grain that is also a complete protein, containing all 9 amino acids, and is a good source of magnesium, riboflavin, and fiber and is free of gluten! It has a pleasant, nutty taste and is amazingly versatile. And especially if you buy it 25 pounds at a time, like I do, it's an affordable and solid pantry staple.

Quinoa provides the "meat", if you will, to my not quite famous vegetarian chili (hardy har har) and accompanies many, many meals in our house. It was a first favorite food of both of my children. You can almost always find a big vat of cooked up, plain quinoa in my fridge, for fast lunch making or whatever.

And it was that ready made tub of cooked quinoa + a spontaneous cookie making wild hair that made me put two and two together. I'll make cookies! With the quinoa!

I had the foresight to scrawl down the ingredients as I tossed them in the mixing bowl. Sometimes I do this and the creation in question turns out to be a real dud, but sometimes I don't write down what I did at all and I regret it later because I get requests to replicate something or other and, in this house, a lot of things are one of a kind. (Which is either good or not, depending. . .)

They turned out so well, I didn't tweak subsequent batches a bit. They are soft but the quinoa provides bits of pleasant crispness (+ plus all that aforementioned supergrain stuff). Wholesome and everyone in my family agrees: they're delicious!

Chocolate Quinoa Cookies

2 eggs
3/4 C Rapadura
1/2 C coconut oil, melted
1 tsp vanilla
1 C flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
pinch cinnamon
6 TBSP cocoa powder
2 C cooked quinoa

wet. dry. wet + dry. stir in quinoa. bake 350 for, oh, 10 minutes? til they look done! makes 2 dozen.

(my apologies if you saw me post this pic on flickr back in early december with the tease that the recipe was 'coming soon'. my writing brain is fully clogged up with a lot of no good garbage)