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Today was a lovely day. I had a student meeting that went super well – the meetings with bright students often do go well. It’s the ones who say things like “But this class is so boring” or “What do you mean Wikipedia isn’t a peer-reviewed journal” that drive me bananas. The student I met today wanted me to go through the rough draft of a pretty decent paper. Easy. After said meeting, I ran into some fellow poliscigeeks on campus and we compared notes on the progress or lack thereof of our theses. My mind was put somewhat at ease by the fact that I’m not as far behind as other people. Still ridiculously behind, but not as bad as I thought. Yaya!

Plus today was sunny. Sunny means busting out the walking dresses, like this little number above (thank you, Freshly Baked Goods!). Sunny also means heaps of vegetables and fun walks to the grocery store to get said vegetables (walks that do not include battling windchill or wearing twelve pairs of mittens). And vegetables mean goulash, or at least they did today.

Now this recipe as shown above could have done with some more kick. I’ve included what I think would be useful kick to the instructions below but you may need more.

Ezmy’s Gorgeous Goulash

1/2 cup quinoa
14 oz pinto beans
2 medium tomatoes
1 small zucchini
2 medium carrots
1 onion
2 cloves garlic
1 1/2 cups broccoli
1 1/2 cup vegetable stock
1/2 tsp black pepper
3 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp marjoram
1 tbsp olive oil

Soak your quinoa in a bit of water while you are chopping your veg. Chop up veg (mince garlic, florets for the broccoli, but otherwise chopped is good). In a nice big soup pot, saute your onions on medium heat until translucent then add the rest of the veg, spices and beans and saute for a few more minutes. Then add the vegetable stock, bring to a boil, and then turn down to let simmer. While the goulash is simmerin’, cook up your quinoa in a small pot. When the the quinoa is ready, the goulash is too. Yay!

I had enough goulash for four servings, but only enough quinoa for two. I ended up just throwing the quinoa in the goulash…but you do what you like. Some people aren’t mixers. Fialonia and I enjoyed this recipe with a bit of bread, ‘Sex and the City’, and in my case water with prenats. I’m sure the prenats and the SATC are optional.