Two delicious meals - quinoa pad thai and vegetarian split pea soup

Last week's cooking experiments were both huge successes in terms of deliciousness, large quantities of leftovers, and healthy eating!

Here's what I have to recommend to you:
Crock pot vegetarian split pea soup - extremely economical, healthy, and fast! I think I spent maybe 20 minutes total prepping the ingredients and then simply setting it to cook in the crockpot was a life saver with a little one demanding so much attention.
http://vegetarian.about.com/od/vegetariancrockpotrecipe/r/crockpotpeasoup.htm

I did make a few substitutions: yellow split peas instead of green, an extra carrot and celery rib, and parsnip instead of potato. The essential ingredient that made this soup a knockout was adding 1/2 tsp of liquid smoke. Incomparable!

I also tried out a quinoa pad thai which was much more effort but totally worth it! I did make quite a few changes so have shown the adapted recipe below. And as always, I just use the vegetable amounts as a guideline and visually compare the vegetable amount to my pile of quinoa and adapt to my personal preference.

Quinoa Pad Thai

Author: Nicole ~ Cooking for Keeps

Serves: 6-8

Ingredients

• 4-5 cups cooked quinoa
• 1 1/2 cup shredded carrots
• 1 cup bean sprouts
• 1/2 small head of napa cabbage shredded or sliced thinly
• 2 large bell peppers, sliced thinly
• 3-4 large garlic cloves minced
• 1 bunch green onions, sliced thinly and divided
• 4 tablespoons tamarind paste
• 8 tablespoons packed brown sugar
• 4 tablespoons fish sauce
• 4 tablespoons water
• 2 tablespoons sirracha
• 2-3 large eggs
• ½ cup chopped peanuts
• ½ cup chopped cilantro
• lime wedges
• Salt

Instructions

1. Make sure to have all of your ingredients ready to go.
2. In a small saucepan over a medium low heat, whisk together tamarind, brown sugar, water, sirracha and fish sauce. Heat just until brown sugar is dissolved, set aside. If you have tamarind pulp instead of paste, make sure to remove the seeds and once you heat the ingredients together, blend until smooth in a food processor or blender.
3. In a large skillet or wok heat 1 teaspoon of canola oil over a high heat.
4. Quickly stir-fry garlic, half of green onions, carrots, bell pepper and cabbage, about 1-2 minutes, remove from pan.
5. Heat another teaspoon of oil in pan, add quinoa, stir fry about 1-2 minutes.
6. Add half of sauce.
7. Make a well in the center of the pan and scramble eggs til cooked, then combine with everything and the rest of the sauce.
8. Serve with chopped peanuts, remaining green onion, cilantro and lots of fresh lime.