Sesame-Soy Quinoa Salad with Tomatoes and Green Beans

Wowies...there's lots of summer catch-up posting to be done in friendly foodie land!  After my small-ish posting binge in July, I went to New York for a few weeks to do some research and visit with my fam.  And as soon as Emily got back from Peru, she started a new job here in the 'burgh, yay roomie!  Needless to say, we haven't been so great about keeping up with a posting rhythm.  That doesn't mean we haven't been making lots of tasty meals with fabulous summer produce, we just haven't translated them to digital space.

In these precious last few days of August, I will attempt to remedy the recent lag, focusing especially on delicious and simple ways to use some produce that's in tip-top shape these days: tomatoes, peaches, eggplant, zucchini, corn, green beans, etc.

Quinoa-Black Bean Salad

This recipe started as an experiment for a potluck last spring.  Several of my friends had never heard of "quinoa" so I decided I needed to make something to show off its tastiness.

Now, for those of you who aren't familiar with this grain, you should be.  Actually, according to wikipedia (the best source for random knowledge) it's not a grain, but a seed, but that doesn't really matter. Quinoa (pronounced "keen-wah") is originally from the Andes and apparently used to be a core crop of the Inkan empire.  More recently, it has become popular among vegetarians for being a complete protein, meaning it has all nine amino acids.  Feel free to whip out that piece of trivia at your next dinner party.