Quinoa and Cake

This week I tried a few new things. The first thing we tried was something called quinoa (pronounced keen-wah). I've heard of this grain before, as it has been recommended to me by friends and even doctors, but I have resisted it for quite some time now. Honestly, it never sounded very appetizing and I assumed that it would require a lot of effort to make it. I was wrong! It was actually very easy to make, as the cooking instructions for it are very similar to that of rice. I wasn't quite sure how to eat it, though, and I am going to continue to experiment with it. From what I've heard, it's a very versatile food and it goes well with many different things. I added black beans and a can of tomatoes & green chiles to my pot of quinoa. We also added a little bit of guacamole to the top of it, and it was actually pretty delicious. I think quinoa will be a really good addition to our diet, as it's supposed to be really healthy. In fact, it is high in amino acids and is considered a complete protein. Don't ask me what that means, but it sounds important and like it's probably pretty good for me ;)

This week, I also made home-made chocolate cake. Last weekend I invited some friends over at the last minute, so I had to use what we had on hand to make something to eat. I managed to scrounge together the ingredients to make chocolate cake...and not from the box, either! It was sooo good! This was the first time I've ever deviated from the box cake mix stuff, and it was so much better. However, I did make this cake using my bleached granulated sugar, bleached white flour, and canola oil...all things processed. Well worth it as it was delicious, but also something I wanted to compare by making it with unprocessed ingredients. This weekend we have friends staying with us, so I decided to experiment on them. I used raw sugar, coconut oil in place of the canola oil, and a mix of unbleached all-purpose flour and whole wheat flour. The rest of the ingredients were unprocessed, except for the powdered sugar that I needed for the frosting. The cake turned out very good, but honestly not quite as good as the processed version. However, the difference between the two cakes was nothing huge, so I will definitely keep making the unprocessed version, as I know it is much better for me and my family.

And those are two steps in my process of going unprocessed.