Quinoa Arugula Salad with pecans

Doesn't this look delicious?  It's a quinoa arugula salad that I threw together.  We got a big bunch of fresh arugula in last week's CSA box.  The leaves are a bit spicy on their own, but mixed with the toasted pecans, feta and quinoa they are just right.

Quinoa Arugula Salad

Ingredients

1.5 cups quinoa, dry

3 cups arugula, roughly chopped and loosely packed

1/2 cup cherry tomatoes, quartered

half a red onion, diced

1 cup chopped pecan pieces

lime juice (fresh or concentrate)

olive oil

Feta

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Toast the quinoa and pecan pieces in separate pans for 5 minutes, be careful that they don't burn.  While the quinoa is cooking prepare the water on the stove.  Add 1.5 cups of water for every 1 cup of quinoa so it's 2 1/4 cups of water for our recipe.  After it is toasted add the quinoa to the boiling water and cover with a lid (slightly open for steam to escape).  Keep simmering on medium-low and cook for 15-20 minutes or until the water is gone.  Remove from heat, take off the lid and allow to cool 5-10 minutes. 

2. In a large bowl toss the cooked quinoa, arugula, tomatoes, red onion, toasted pecans and feta cheese together (although we kept the nuts out so people could add their own).  Drizzle olive oil and lime juice over individual servings to taste.

We all ate this salad although some of us (the 4 year old) added quite a bit of feta.  I personally added a lot of pecans, my favorite part!  My husband put some leftover pita chip crumbs (from the swiss chard tzatziki recipe) on his which he preferred to the pecans.