Vegan Quinoa Lentil Salad Holy Cow Vegan Recipes

It was a busy Fourth of July weekend this year, but it was also a fun one. Desi and I took a day trip to one of our favorite places here in the Washington area, Harper’s Ferry, a national park on the West Virginia border. Harper’s Ferry is just an hour’s drive from Washington but perhaps the fact that you cross two state borders to get there gives it that slight touch of the exotic. It was a gorgeous day perfect for hiking, and hike we did. Harper’s Ferry has something for everyone: mysterious trails, sweeping views, a confluence of two fabled rivers– the Shenandoah and the Potomac– a historic and still active railroad, ruins of an old mill, and stories of heroic abolitionists. As we made our way to Lower Town, where everyone converges, we saw wildflowers of every color and thorny bushes filled with little red berries that Desi insisted were raspberries because they looked just like. He would have eaten them had I not stopped him – it’s like traveling with a kid. Eagles cut an arc across the perfect blue sky dotted with white clouds. As we walked along the river we spotted a turtle, a heron, ducks, and an intrepid deer who stared at us with huge, soft eyes, wondering, no doubt, why we were there. We had a leisurely lunch at one of the restaurants in Lower Town, gave a miss to Jefferson Rock – a shale rock formation from where Thomas Jefferson is said to have viewed the confluence of the rivers– just because we’d been there a dozen times before and were too tired to do any more walking and climbing, and finally we headed back home to Opie and Pie, in time for dinner and to watch the fireworks on TV. Hope you had a lovely Fourth. What did you do? I made this recipe the other night so we could have something tasty to brown bag, but we nearly ate it all up before we could actually get it into our lunchboxes. This Quinoa and Lentil Salad is complex, delicious and so simple that you will wonder how it got to be all those things. I added to the salad a ton of fresh vegetables, including onions, carrots, celery, green peppers and sweet potatoes. And then I drizzled over it strips of fresh basil from my yard. The smokiness of the cumin and the chili was perfect with the earthy lentils, nutty quinoa and the sweetness of the sweet potatoes, carrots and basil. And each serving has more than 16 grams of protein and nearly 19 grams of dietary fiber. Beat that. Check to get new recipe updates by email.

Just looking at the pictures now, as I post this, is making me hungry. Hope you’ll try it too. Enjoy!