Quinoa & Brown Rice Salad in a Jar

I started a new job a couple of weeks ago, and there isn't much nearby for good, clean food. This past week I faked it fairly well, but I knew I needed to come up with a solid solution for eating clean.  I had seen a website with salads-in-a-jar and thought those might be interesting, so I decided that this weekend, I was going to pursue more and find out.

I found The Yummy Life and her blog had four different versions of a quinoa salad in a jar. I went foraging in the kitchen and found I had just about everything to make the Mediterranean version, sort of, so that's what I made!

I had some organic precooked quinoa and brown rice with garlic that we had purchased at Costco, so I used that instead of cooking normal quinoa because, um, yea, I don't know where I put the raw quinoa, but it's very safe. :)  I figured out that the recipe called for 1/2 cup of quinoa and this packet had just about 2 cups so that meant I could make 4 jars, which is perfect, because, one day this week, I am going to leave the building and go explore at lunch.  I also didn't have Greek olives, but for some reason, we have 70-11 cans of pitted black olives so I used some of those that I chopped up. I also didn't have roasted red peppers, but I had a gorgeous raw red bell pepper, so I used that. I also didn't use puny pint size jars, I love spinach so I used quart jars and packed in a lot of spinach instead of the 1-2 cups she used. Yum!

Here's a link to the recipes: The Yummy Life

Oh, and one more thing. I didn't have ground chia seeds, but I did have whole ones, and I had this little OXO spice grinder that I was given many years ago for Christmas by a dear friend. Mine has a glass jar. Apparently they now come with acrylic jars. Anyhow, I found that I could dial down the grinder and grind my whole chia seeds! So happy. :)

Here's a photo of my Mediterranean Salads chillin' in the fridge, ready for me to grab and go in the morning. I hope they taste as good as they look!

If you decide to give these a try, let me know. I will report back on how they taste. Have a fabulous day!