Here comes part two of the inter­view with Camilla, the author of 500 Best Quinoa Recipes and the Peanut But­ter and Quinoa Gra­nola recipe. The first part of the inter­view can be found here. It was the first time I made gra­nola with quinoa. As I was brows­ing through the book, I saw this recipe, in which I have every ingre­di­ent in my pantry so I decided to give it a shot. I love the taste of it! The quinoa added a good crunch and the peanut but­ter went very well with the nutty flavour of the quinoa. The part two of the inter­view, Camilla talks about her favourite recipe out of her 500 recipes in the cook­book and how she bal­ances her lifestyle as a cook­book author, mother, and fit­ness instructor.

You have a spe­cific recipe from the book that you rec­om­mend to your readers?

I do, my favourite quinoa recipe is the Warm But­ter­nut Squash Salad with Crispy Chick­peas (page 212). I love but­ter­nut squash, I love the sweet and tangy flavours. I am an arugula fan, I can eat it every day. It is basi­cally all my favourite flavours all in one bowl. In the book of 500 recipes, this is my favourite. I also make the break­fast cookie, because it is just so easy to eat. My son eats it with a glass of milk in the morn­ing. He is not a big break­fast eater but if I asked him if he’d like a cookie, he would eat it.

I know you also teach fit­ness, how can you bal­ance your lifestyle when you have so many hats to wear?

I feel like these are the things that I really love to do. I pro­posed my first cook­book in grad­u­ate school, and I would work on it when I am not work­ing on my dis­ser­ta­tion. I always feel so guilty about it when I am not work­ing on my dis­ser­ta­tion. I have taught classes dur­ing grad­u­ate school as well, it was always an extra thing to squeeze in. Now that I have decided to do this full-time, when you love what you do (I mean it is still hard work), but it is just the right fit for me. In terms of prac­ti­cal­ity, I teach most of my classes in the morn­ing at 6am and two evening classes. It gets me going in the morn­ing and then for the rest of the day before I pick my son up, I stay at home and do recipe testing.

I would love to be able to test recipes and write cook­books one day. That would be my dream job actu­ally. It was a plea­sure to be able to speak to Camilla and get­ting to know how she became a cook­book author. (Maybe I can work towards that, somehow.)

Camilla is also work­ing on a new cook­book but she kept the topic a secret, though I am look­ing for­ward to it when it is published.

Any­ways, onto the gra­nola recipe. This gra­nola is very easy to pre­pare and tastes very deli­cious, even bet­ter if you like peanut but­ter. The quinoa adds extra pro­tein and nutri­tional value such as iron, cal­cium and potas­sium, cop­per, and potas­sium. It makes a great snack and break­fast. Did I men­tion that 500 Best Quinoa Recipes is also a gluten-free cook­book? It is great for peo­ple who can’t have gluten or are sen­si­tive to gluten. It is amaz­ing how much you can with quinoa, this book opened up my mind about quinoa. It has every­thing like break­fasts, appe­tiz­ers, soups, sal­ads, main dishes, breads, cook­ies, pies etc. It even has instruc­tions on how to sprout your quinoa and of course there are 500 recipes. It is always nice to intro­duce some­thing new to your diet because it gives you more vari­ety in what to eat, that is what I feel when I started hav­ing quinoa. It is one of those few things that is healthy and tasty at the same time.

This is only one of the 500 recipes in the book, now onto the other 499…