pineapple & coconut quinoa

I've been eying The Spunky Coconut's pineapple coconut quinoa recipe for over a week now.. and I finally collected and readied all the ingredients I needed. You can check her recipe out - but mine's a little bit different.. I changed the proportions a bit, and soaked the quinoa for over 12 hours, so it changed the amount of liquid I needed. This was SOO good. I'm going to make it for a bigger group of people next time..

Serves 4-6
You will need:

1 1/2 cups quinoa (soaked in water for at least 12 hours to remove the outer coating of saponin, which gives it a bitter taste. After soaked, rinse rinse rinse then strain to remove all the soapy sud like bubbles. Now you'll have about 2 1/2 cups of prepped quinoa.)
1/2 yellow or white onion, finely chopped
3 tbsp coconut oil
2/3 cup pineapple, chopped
1/4 cup whole coconut milk
1/4-1/2 cup chicken or vegetable broth
1/4 tsp ground ginger

1/8-1/4 tsp cayenne, how hot do you like it?

1/2 tsp Herbamare or slightly less if you use plain sea salt
1/8 tsp salt

1 1/2 cups chopped pineapple

1/2 cup chopped walnuts ooh! or cashews.. man. I wish I thought of that before. Cashews would be so good..

2 cups fresh finely chopped spinach (I used butter lettuce - any leaf will do)

optional: hemp seeds - for nutritional, not taste value

Ready?

1 - Sauté the onion in the coconut oil in a medium pot.
2 - Purée 2/3 cup pineapple with coconut milk and chicken/veggie broth
3 - Add the liquid mixture to the pot and bring to a simmer.
4 - Add the pre-soaked, rinsed, and strained quinoa. Simmer with lid on for about 14ish minutes.
5 - Remove the lid and let it rest for a few minutes.

6 - Mix in the spices, walnuts, chopped pineapple, green leaves, and optional hemp seeds
7 - Enjoy!!

**I'm making an addition to this post! I'm having leftovers right now for dinner.. and I heated it up with some more chicken broth, plus some chicken shredded up from the broth I made yesterday. AND I also added a handful of chopped up green onion. YUM.