In my long and in depth search last week for a healthy recipe
for frog eye salad, I came across this recipe
for a fruit
salad using quinoa. I honestly couldn’t wait to try it. This weekend was
the perfect opportunity.
The baby turned one on Sunday and we celebrated with a big
outdoor picnic. This provided a wonderful chance to try this recipe on my whole,
unsuspecting family.
Now, I don’t recommend trying brand new recipes for the
first time at large family events. I don’t recommend trying them out on people
you want to impress, or if things need to be “perfect” for you. But I wanted a
large audience to sample this, and I don’t really care if things don’t turn out
‘just so.’ I have had many more failures in my cooking career than I have had
success.
The recipe said the salad would only keep for 12 hours in
the fridge, so I went ahead and made the quinoa the day before, but I didn’t
put anything else together.
An hour before the party, after chairs were all set up and
table cloths on, I made the salad. There honestly isn’t much to putting it together. I did have to make some substitutions, I used
honey instead of the brown rice syrup, and I used extra virgin olive oil
instead of coconut oil. Mostly because I didn’t have those two things, and I
wasn’t about to go out and buy them to make one tester fruit salad. I also
didn’t put kiwi in it, because kiwi wasn’t on sale at my local store, but
blackberries were.
I used my little mini-blender to make the dressing and
tossed it all together. I feel like it made a HUGE amount of salad. So take
that into consideration if you are going to try it.
The verdict is that the reviews were mixed. Some people
loved it and some people did not like it at all. No one asked for the recipe,
and no one wanted to take some of it home. I think that speaks for itself. I
won’t be making it again. The flavor of the mint was much too strong. I really
enjoyed the texture of the quinoa with the fruit and coconut and the crunch of
the almonds, but it all just ended up tasting like gum or in my case my
grandparent’s irrigation ditch that we used to swim in where the mint used to
grow along the banks. I thought perhaps
it was just my dislike of strong mint flavors that made me not like the salad,
but there were several people there that never swam in ditch water and they
weren’t over-the-moon about the salad either. 
If I ever do attempt it again, I will half the mint in the
dressing right off the top, and then once I made the dressing I will add it
very slowly to taste. I love the idea
behind this salad and I am going to keep searching for a quinoa fruit salad
that I really like.
