It's Pronounced Keen-Wah

This week I started freaking out about the kinds of protein I have been eating lately. In other words, I wondered if I was relying too heavily on egg whites as my protein source each day.

Eggs and egg whites are a great vegetarian — I'm not vegan, thankfully — option for complete protein. Egg salad sandwiches from Starbucks are not, and that's where I was afraid I was going to slide down a slippery slope. As I worried I was eating too little protein for my intense workout schedule, I looked to the nearest thing possible. That, it turned out, was the egg salad sandwich at the Starbucks in the lobby of my office building.

Full disclosure: I ate one of the 22 gram sandwiches today. More full disclosure: It has 460 calories, half from fat. That doesn't mean it's the worst option, it just means it isn't the best.

So, I decided it was time to try quinoa (pronounced keen-wah), which long has been considered one of the best vegetarian-friendly "complete" proteins. That means it has all of the things a meaty protein has and you don't have to count on two types of vegetarian proteins — rice AND beans, for instance — to get a complete protein.

I went to my friendly, neighborhood Whole Foods and bought some Red Mill brand quinoa, as well as a few other essentials. It cooks just like rice and, when added with a handful of edamame beans (another great protein source), a little sauteed red pepper and onion, it's quite delicious. I also added the zest of one small lemon, as well as the juice, completing the fresh, summer flavor.

Needless to say, quinoa is my new friend. I'm just going to have to watch out for the carbs it also packs. It's a little too much like pasta — it's a seed, actually — for the best of both worlds. Still, I was far overdue for experimenting with this ingredient.