The first foodstuff is quinoa. It comes from the Andes in South America and can be used like rice, bulgar wheat, pasta and so on, but though the former are different kinds of cereals or made from a cereal, quinoa is really the seed of a goosefoot plant, which makes it a pseudocereal. Unlike those cereals, quinoa has a high protein content. Quinoa comes in different colors, white, red, black and blue. I haven’t seen any blue quinoa, but I hope that some day I will.

The first time I had quinoa I thought it was terrible. It was more or less like dust. I imagine it was of low quality, maybe past the expiration date. Another reason might be the fact that quinoa contains bitter-tasting saponins, which aren’t unhealthy, but just have a bad taste. It’s easy to get rid of the saponins if only you know how. All you have to do is rinse the quinoa first in cold, then boiling water. After that you can stir-fry the dry seeds first or simply boil them, like rice.

There are other products that contain quinoa, for instance a mix of oatmeal and quinoa that can be prepared the same way as oatmeal. Supposedly, there’s also pasta made from quinoa, but unfortunately I’ve never been able to get it.