Sunday Funday - In the Kitchen!

So two posts in one day is a bit uncharacteristic of me but I just had to revel in the delights of my evening's experimentation in the kitchen.

I'm not sure why I got hungry tonight, considering my mid afternoon giant cookie and iced coffee delight, but I think I was inspired by the afternoon of food blog surfing and daunted by the next 2 weeks of this No Sugar Challenge I said I am about to embark on.  I started to think I should probably do a little preparation (or maybe I just wanted a distraction from my homework).
TO THE KITCHEN!
Armed with some quinoa from a local restaurant, Catch a Healthy Habit and some fresh baked whole wheat sourdough from down the street at my local bakery I decided to put the blog inspired ideas floating around in my head to work.
Experiment: Quinoa "burger" sandwiches
Quinoa, the most magical grain in my opinion.  It's loaded with nutrients and protein (it's a complete protein actually!).  I love its chewy, nutty fluffiness.
Ingredients:

Basil

I freeze my fresh basil - it may look ugly, but it still smells and tastes great!

1 Stem of Kale

Cooked Quinoa - 1/4 measured uncooked

Approx 3/4 cup egg white

I didn't really measure here, but that's pretty close probably.  It's an experiment, like improv - "yes, and"!

Add some dried parsley, pepper and basil and mix it all together.  

You basically cook it on a skillet like you would a pancake

Scrape the excess egg away as it cooks

After 5 min or till it looks sturdy - Flip it!

My mixture made 3 patties.  Perfectly sandwich sized..how convenient :)

Topped with Cucumber

And the best part as always.  Leftovers!!

Also, with this whole upcoming no sugar challenge I started to think of what during my week I would have to give up.  One of the things I've recently become obsessed with at work at the little starbucks cafe is a soymilk chai tea latte.  I get it a little differently, basically my chai latte is just steamed soy milk with a bag of chai tea - tastes just as good as a real chai latte without the sugar.  BUT with this challenge I can't have ANYTHING with added sugar.  And I'm pretty sure the soymilk they use at work is full on sugarfied.  So I tried to create it tonight after dinner at home to see if I could make it myself using unsweetened soymilk.  The lady who works at the cafe told me her grandfather always used to warm up milk and shake it and it turns out just like frothed steamed milk. In fact, it DOES!  I used a Mason jar to shake mine.  It came out with about an inch of froth..mmm..

Perfect end to the evening :)   The only thing I can't quite get down is how to make it HOT like steamed milk. I put it in the microwave for 2 minutes and it was hot but definitely not the same.  Longer than 2 minutes seems excessive..but I may have to try.  The flavor of the tea would probably be stronger if it were hotter.