How to get lots of protein on a vegetarian diet

Last week I met up with a friend of mine who 5 weeks ago gave birth to two beautiful twin boys. She has struggled to breastfeed the boys and the doctor informed her that one of the reasons she has struggled is because she doesn’t have enough protein in her diet. You see she is a vegetarian and that is something that she has always struggled with, in fact during her pregnancy it got so bad that she had to start eating meat just to be able to keep up with providing her body with enough protein to help grow those little boys. 

Now I remember what it was like when Morgan was 5 weeks old, so I can only begin to imagine how hard it must be for her with two, plus as her husband was way things were very stressful. So Chris and I decided that we would go over and give her a hand with the boys and provide a dinner that would help give her the protein she needed without having to compromise her diet.

Thankfully it didn’t take long to decide how to do that because it was a dish that was already on my menu for the week, Southwest Quinoa Salad a double dosage of protein goodness.

Finding a cheaper way to include protein in your meal with Quinoa

Quinoa is an interesting little grain, one that I had heard a lot about but never tasted. I had often been told about how difficult it was to prepare so to be honest I was nervous about giving it a try. But when you have a grain that is high in protein and essential amino acids, making it the only plant that is a complete protein, it was one that I knew I had to at least try. When it comes to trying to watch your food budget it is very important to still find ingredients that can provide your family with the nutritional value that they need. While it might sound healthy to feed your family a salad and whole grains every day you can't leave out the essential nutritional value of protein. Discovering how amazing quinoa was helped me find one more way to serve up a healthy well balanced meal to my family without having to rely on expensive meats. Now for this particular dish I did use a bag of frozen prawns but cooking up quinoa on its own proves to be not only tasty but a great way to provide a good meal and not have to include meat. And another good thing that I learned is that quinoa is really not as hard to prepare as others had led me to believe.