Day One.

Breakfast: homemade granola & milk, green tea
Lunch : butter bean & quinoa salad with smoky lime dressing, fresh pineapple with soya yogurt
Snack: 6 brazil nuts & 4 dried apricots, green tea
Dinner : at the mercy of Book Club!

Now the eagle eyed amongst you will have spotted that today was perhaps an inauspicious start. Exactly how inauspicious will be difficult to say until I post what I ate at Book Club. The morning milk with my cereal (wheat free!) was due a late decision re. taking up this challenge. However, do not worry, dear reader, the oat milk and rice milk have been purchased and are chilling in the fridge. First impressions of the rice milk, is that it seemms quite sweet. I guess I have never considered that milk is sweet, despite knowing it contains lactose (milk sugar). I'll try the oat milk to compare. I even found some ingenious souls on Recipezaar make their own. I'll keep that idea for another day.

Update: dinner was baked salmon, with new potatoes and mangetouts, perfect! I really didn't feel like desset, but ate a mouthful of lemon meringue roulade (w & d- free!!!).

I based my lunch time salad on one posted today by Karen at www.familystylefood.com. I made a few small changes to take into account what I had in my kitchen, but it was a very delicious lunch. And the best part is that there's enough left for tomorrow! Karen uses black beans, the original recipe in Sauce magazine used black-eye beans and I used butter beans. I may be sticking my neck out here, but I think it's a fairly safe bet that all beans would work well in this recipe.



Butter Bean and Quinoa Salad with Smoky Lime Dressing
from Karen at www.familystylefood.com

Serves 2 for lunch

1/2 cup quinoa, rinsed well in a sieve
1/4 small red onion finely chopped (but spring onions would be better - use 2)
1/2 can butter beans
a handful of chopped parsley (original recipe calls for coriander)

dressing:
1 1/2 T olive oil
1 T red wine vinegar
1 T fresh lime juice
1/2 T soy sauce
1/2 t sugar
1/4 t sea salt
1/2 tsp chipotle chile in adobe
1 small garlic clove, finely chopped

Place all dressing ingredients in a mini blender and process until combined. Meanwhile, bring the quinoa to a boil in a pan with 1 cup water. Reduce heat, cover and cook until liquid absorbed, about 15 mins. Stir in the onions and parsley and dressing. Serve warm or at room temperature.