Quinoa, Pepper, Mushroom Sauté

Description
This type of quinoa stew can be adapted according to what you have on hand, the quantities can be varied too. Latin American type vegetables like tomatoes, aubergines (egg plants in American English) courgettes (zucchinis), sweetcorn give the dish a Latin American flavour. The quinoa provides plenty of good quality protein.

I made it as a main dish but it will probably also work as a side dish if you make less or share with more than one person.

Ingredients

 * 1 small onion roughly chopped
 * 1 small bell pepper roughly chopped
 * About 4 fairly small mushrooms chopped
 * Quinoa
 * 1 tablespoon rape seed oil (other vegetable oils probably also work)
 * Vegetarian stock powder in place of salt
 * 1 lime
 * A little vegan cheese alternative (optional. It worked with very little cheese alternative and would have worked with none.  It would probably also have worked with dairy cheese but quinoa has high protein and I wanted something I could recommend to vegans.)

Directions
Stir from time to time while different ingredients are being added and cooked.
 * 1) Sautee the onion bell pepper in the oil, while this is being done you can cut up the mushrooms.
 * 2) Add the mushrooms.
 * 3) Add stock powder.
 * 4) Add quinoa and boiling water.
 * 5) Cut the lime and squeeze it into the broth.
 * 6) Wait till everything is fully cooked add more water if needed, then serve.

Result
I liked it better than most vegan recipes. The lime made it rather sour and other people may have preferred less or a little lime juice instead.

I made a similar dish a second time and added too much quinoa so it was fairly bland. You need to take care how much quinoa you add as quinoa swells during cooking like pasta, rice, cous cous and many other grain products. What looks like a small amount when you put it in can swell to much more during cooking.