Healthy Firehouse Meals

Yesterday was my turn to cook at the station again. Since I'm at a single company house now with less crew members, it means I have to cook more often and learn a few more recipes. Since we have our wonderful bay area summer weather with temps in the 90's these days, I decided to go with a crisp and refreshing meal for dinner. Using the Whole Foods app on my ipod I found the following recipes

Watermelon and Feta Salad with Mint

http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/recipes/653

and

Quinoa Primavera with Chicken, Spring Peas and Asparagas

http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/recipes/recipe.php?recipeId=1087


For the Watermelon salad I left out he tomatoes and cubed the watermelon. I substituted cous cous for the quinoa because we had a box on hand at the station. I also left the chicken, cous cous and veggies in separate dishes to accommodate for me being veggie and another crew member on the paleo diet. Cooking for 5 at the firehouse I multiplied each of the ingredients by 1 1/2. This proved to be unnecessary for the balsamic reduction with plenty left over. 1 cup of balsamic would have been more than enough. Total time for both recipes (minus the calls that we ran while I was cooking) was about 1/2 an hour for each dish. The balsamic reduction can be omitted all together saving about 15 minutes on the watermelon salad. The dishes came out quite tasty with lots of good flavors and folks going back for seconds and thirds.