Quinoa, edamame and chargrilled peppers with prawns

At a meeting last week I had a salad from M&S with quinoa, edamame beans and chicken.  I admit it, I felt (a) very healthy and (b) slightly like a pompous ass when I said what I was having.  I can barely pronounce quinoa, had no idea what it was and certainly hadn’t eaten it before but I was avoiding the sandwiches and cakes like the plague and gave it a try.  Surprisingly to me it was actually really tasty so I decided to use it as inspiration for a new, healthy dinner.

I was a woman on a mission trying to find edamame beans and searched high and low, finally finding them in Waitrose.  I got a couple of bags of frozen and some tinned beans as I wanted to see what the difference was.  I see that they’re higher in fat than I imagined at 5% but as they’re a soy bean that’s not a huge worry.  I checked the Slimming World website and the beans are syn free.

While I was at the grocery store I picked up a packet of Uncle Bens whole grain rice with quinoa, tomato and basil (2 ½ syns).  I decided to add my edamame beans, sweetcorn and grill some red peppers and add prawns as the protein.  

The end product was a big bowl of healthy food that’s low in syns.  Yes, it was tasty but I like my food hot both temperature and spicy and this kinda missed the mark for me there.  On reflection a smaller portion would make a really good lunch.

Quinoa, edamame, chargrilled peppers and prawn salad

So this was a good, healthy dinner that's low in calories and fat and I'd have it again but I'd much rather have a big chilli so I guess I'm not that much of a pompous ass!

Kathy xx