Getting some protein within 15 minutes of finishing your exercising or running is a fast start to recovering for your next session if you exercise or run regularly (not a week later). It helps you feel better to be able to go harder, or feel easier, on the next session. It’s good nutrition, too. However, downing dry and hot toasts with honey, a cold meat sandwich, pasta and meat sauce, and so on, so soon after my workout and shower isn’t my idea of a pleasant experience, I usually want to drink, drink and drink cold fluids.

Well, applying my life philosophy #3 – AND not OR – I have now found my post exercise source of cold protein and fluids.

My answer is Quinoa Jell-O!

I’ve combined good old innocuous Jell-O food that many of us grew up eating, at least in North America, with what NASA calls the best food on the planet, quinoa, for a yummy and complete source of protein post exercise! Quinoa has a more complete protein profile than most meats out there, if not all meats, without the fats and other stuff in meats that are not so desirable… including stuff fed to some farm animals in their mass production! Best of all, it’s cold and has fluids that satisfies after all that sweating from exercise! It’s like a protein dessert without all that powder taste and all!

So how do you make quinoa Jell-O?

Well, that takes a bit of planning. You have to make your quinoa separately before you make your Jell-O.

I put my raw quinoa in a rice cooker (2:1 water ratio) and press a button to have it done 45 minutes later. It then keeps until I’m ready to use it so after that, I can do my Jell-O any time.

Making Jell-O is easy. Boil water and add 1 cup to the powder. I’d add a tad more than a cup given the quinoa being added.

Stir the hot water and Jell-O powder till all the powder is dissolved. Add the same amount of cold water and mix well further.

Then add quinoa to your heart’s content. I added six tablespoons, but each was heaping over the top because scooping quinoa allows the quinoa to pile up.

The quinoa settles on the bottom, unfortunately, rather than be spread throughout the Jell-O, so gauge how much you want by thinking of it as the cake part of a the cake, and the Jell-O as the icing part of the cake. That’s how it looks in the picture below.

If you’re an expert Jell-O maker, you may know how to spread the quinoa out more evenly, but it’s fine with me. I eat it like I used to eat cake with icing. Some cake and some icing with each byte. That was a long time ago, though, when I used to eat cake with icing. Ever since I found out how hard the icing was to fully clean off my hands and utensils afterward, I didn’t want it on my stomach lining so that was that! 🙂

If you’re worried about the sugar and calories in Jell-O, they have sugar-free / low calorie Jell-O. Quite a bit more expensive, though, than regular Jell-O, by the gram. However, packages are still about the same price, just a lot less contained.

Kraft brands foods have quite the website on Jell-O, with everything from history to mega numbers of recipes. I don’t think they have this one, though! Maybe they can give me a life supply of Jell-O or something for this innovative idea, rather than me buying it and funding those no good New England Patriots as I’m an Indianapolis Colts fan! 🙂

Enjoy!

Please click here for my other innovative quinoa recipes.