Chicken wings and quinoa salad

This was a dinner made somewhat in response to a request from the roommate. She loves pesto, a lot. And it might not look like it, but there is A TON of pesto going on in this dish. Those are pesto-drenched roast chicken wings, and that quinoa salad is dressed in pesto-mayonnaise.

Now is as good a time as any to get into a BIG theme in my cooking. I mostly cook whatever I want to eat at any given moment. The only real limitation is that I have to eat a vegetable or fruit in said meal (don't worry, I have a VERY wide definition of vegetable or fruit), and it has to be reasonably priced ingredients. I cook a lot of chicken wings, beans, tomato-sauce, pasta, rice, that sort of thing.

If you ever see anything pricey show up, it is because it was bought in bulk at Costco (Dear America, this is why I love you, please never stop inventing fantastic things like Costco.)

Seriously, I love bulk stores, and I cry a lot because the current city does not have as many good ones as the old city. Or if it does, I haven't found them yet.

This is the quinoa salad. Full disclosure. I did not know what I was making when I made this. As in, when I moved, I inherited this tub of some sort of a grain/bean. It was small, and brown, and I didn't know how to cook it. One day, I was hungry, so I decided to boil said tub of stuff. Once I boiled it for 20 minutes, I kept boiling it. Because it seemed fine. Then all of the sudden it separated into two pieces, each grain became one little sproingy thing and one little bean. And I freaked out a little bit. But I ate it anyways, because, well, I have not got enough money to throw away food just because it scares me.

Turns out, quinoa is SUPPOSED to do that. Thanks internet!

I also roasted some peppers, onions, and carrots for 20 minutes, then tossed is all with spinach, above-mentioned mayonnaise-pesto dressing, and some goat cheese. *Swoon*. I love goat cheese. I really love all cheese, but god. Goat cheese.

The chicken was pretty easy. I just thawed some frozen chicken wings, and poured a TON of pesto on them. Put all that in a bag with some salt, pepper, and more dried basil flakes (Basil=yummy). Let that sit for an hour, although more time would be better. Then I baked them at 375 for about 45 minutes (I think). I judged that with a general look/smell test for doneness, because I don't trust our oven very much for heat or time.

Delicious!