Since I like to combine my travel reports with some recipes of the typical cuisine I present you: quinoa salad with spinach, pomegranate and feta cheese. A lot of you might be thinking now – what does that have to do with Canada? You are right; Quinoa and pomegranates are not the first thing you might think of when it comes to typical Canadian food. Still, it is the food-experiences I made during our trip that results in this recipe. Local, fresh, organic – those were the keywords, that followed us everywhere, restaurants, supermarkets, farmers markets, you name it. This new trend, that people are developing a higher interest in a healthy lifestyle, nutrition and regional products can also be seen in Europe but in Canada (and I guess also in the USA) it is huge. My last trip to the states was 7 years ago and I remember eating pancakes, pancakes, burger and even more pancakes during my stay. This time it was much easier to find rather healthy recipes, no matter if we stayed in big cities like Seattle or Vancouver or had breakfast in a tiny town on the way.

That is why quinoa was pretty much everywhere. In almost every restaurant there was at least some recipe that involved quinoa. Usually served with fish and kale. Which is a slight problem for me because I absolutely cannot stand kale. I´m sorry, I know it is super healthy and stuff but I just don´t like any cabbage at all and kale, for me, is the worst. Unfortunately I live in the worst region possible to hate kale, because here in northern Germany people looove the kale season. There are even “Kale-tours” where people walk around drinking all day and end the day with the traditional dish – kale and sausage. If you have ever tried that recipe, you might understand why I am not a hug kale fan.

So when I thought about how to combine all my Canada-memories in one recipe, I knew I had to substitute kale for something else. Since I still wanted something green in my salad I used fresh spinach. Toss it off with pomegranate seeds and feta cheese and there you go. The colors are amazing, which is always a good sign for a salad. It´s super healthy too but I won´t bore you with any nutritional facts now. If you want, you can go ahead and add walnuts. That was my original intention too, but I only remembered not having any at home after I came back from grocery shopping.
Serves 2:
125 g Quinoa
2 handful of fresh spinach leaves
1 Pomegranate
Feta cheese
For the dressing:
½ Onion
½ Lemon
3 tbsp. Olive oil
Salt and pepper
Dried herbs
1) For the dressing, chop the onion. Squeeze the lemon and add lemon juice and onion together. Let sit for a while before adding olive oil, salt, pepper and dried herbs.
2) In a pot, boil the quinoa in water until it is soft. Let cool. Wash the spinach and add to the quinoa. Add pomegranate seeds. The easiest way to do so is to tap the back of the pomegranate half with a spoon, that way the seeds fall out on their own. Add feta cheese and dressing and enjoy.