The Best-o Pesto: A Quinoa Salad You’ll Love
Finally back on track this week! On Sunday, we went grocery shopping and grabbed everything we needed for meal prep. Plus, I scored some awesome new meal prep containers—bigger, better quality, and only $6.00 for 10 at Bianca’s Liquidation Center! We were using old restaurant containers and a pack of containers we got from Dollarama – so this is definitely an upgrade! I also picked up a food slicer and a slap-chop-style chopper, thanks to Mike’s recommendation. I found them at Superstore on sale for $18.00 each! I thought it was a steal of a deal, my wife thought it was just another thing to add to our drawers – so I’m determined to prove to her that they’ll be as useful as I think they will be!
For this week’s meal, we made Broccoli Pesto Quinoa Salad. Honestly, it took longer than expected, but that might be because I decided to film the process. Also, I used way more dishes than usual, which made for a messier kitchen. I got the recipe from an online blog—I love following written recipes because they’re easier to reference than a video, but I do appreciate watching a video to see how it’s supposed to turn out. Pros and cons to both!
The new slicer made prepping radishes easier, but I didn’t love that I couldn’t choose the slice thickness. I had to go back and chop them down further, but I think the slicer will still come in handy for other meals since it has multiple blade options. I haven’t used the vegetable chopper yet, but I’m excited to try it!
As for the recipe itself? 9/10—absolutely delicious, but it lost a point for how long it took. Also, I made the mistake of following the recipe as written instead of doubling it. It made four portions, which would’ve been fine if it was just for me, but… my wife needs to eat too! Additionally, I didn’t know I would have to make crispy roasted chickpeas, so after I was done everything, I had to wait for the chickpeas to cook. Lesson learned read through the whole recipe BEFORE you start to cook.
Cost Breakdown
Superstore:
- Frozen Peas – $3.00
- Hemp Hearts – $8.50
- 1 lb Bag of Radishes – $3.50
- Mint – $2.49
- Broccoli – $6.00
- 2 Avocados – $2.94
- Lemon – $0.87
- Kale – $2.99
Grand Total: $30.29 + tax
Looking forward to next week’s meal prep—hopefully, I’ll be more efficient this time!
3 thoughts on “The Best-o Pesto: A Quinoa Salad You’ll Love”
I completely agree that I would rather read how to do something than watch how, but it does depend on what you are doing sometimes. I have tried recipes from Love and Lemons before, and I can’t remember one being bad. Do you typically read the entire instructions first or do you work as you go? Also how helpful do you find the comments/reviews?
This is about my fourth recipe from them! Typically we choose Supper Recipes! I have usually work as I go, but this recipe showed me I should definitely be reading the entire instructions first ha-ha. I also sometimes glance at the comments/reviews, but don’t find them overly helpful as they are usually just saying how they like or don’t like the recipe! Thanks for reading Danine 🙂
What a successful meal prep week! The Broccoli Pesto Quinoa Salad sounds delicious, and worth the extra time.
Those new containers were such a steal – I forget sometimes that Bianca’s Liquidation always seems to have hidden gems. I might have to take a peak there this weekend!
I can relate to the struggle of using way too many dishes while cooking – it always feels like a mini disaster zone by the end lol! As someone who dislikes doing lots of dishes, I often use recipes off @stayfitmom_krista on Instagram! Personally, I 1.5X the recipe for myself. So just keep that in mind and play around with the amounts, but the amount of dishes saved is nice :)!
I cannot wait to see your next creation!!