Quinoa, Cho-chos, and Extreme Warheads

SUPERFOODS



We have been eating Red Quinoa lately, with stir-fried tofu and veggies, which is a SuperFood.  It pretends to be an ordinary plant growing in the highlands of the Andes, but the grains contain incredible amounts of amino acids, iron, vitamins, and is gluten-free.  It is one of the two reasons there is not much malnutrition in the poor communities of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia.  It cooks up like rice and tastes even better.  We can buy it for $5.99 a pound at Common Ground in downtown Bloomington .  It's YUMMY. 

I wish we could find some place local to buy cho-chos, which are the South American version of lupini beans, the beans from the Lupine Plant.  Poisonous unless you treat them with salted water for several days, then drain that water to get rid of the alkaline covering on the seeds.  Monty Python fans may remember Dennis Moore, robs from the rich and gives to the poor.  What he gave were lupines.  Robbing the rich saying "Your lupines or your life!"  and then giving them to the poor poor people who didn't want lupines but wanted food, medicine, clothing, etc.  However in real life it turns out that the seeds, the cho-chos, are another superfood.  Protein-filled little white beans that you can eat with lime juice, chopped red onions, and salt.  Sold in little plastic bags in the street in South America.  Not easy to find in Normal, Illinois.

Extreme Warheads are not a superfood.  However it is some Halloween candy that is so nasty it could turn a 12-year old boy away from Candy.  And that is just as good.