Chicken Quinoa Lettuce Wraps

I was torn between my desire for harvest-y foods and 100º weather.  So I invented a hearty stuffing and turned it into a lettuce wrap.  This can count as a casserole without the lettuce, and nutritionally is a full meal.  Or you could put it on top of torn lettuce and make it a salad.  If your traditions allow quinoa, it's KLP.  Any of these ways are low-effort and take maybe half an hour to make.

I went to Sprouts to get the chicken apple sausage for this, and they had pumpkin spice chicken sausage.  If I was using squash instead of an apple in this, I probably would have gone for it.  Even the butcher confessed he hadn't tried it, and his boss was ready to chuck the rest of the batch if no one bought it.  Maybe there's a limit to what people will buy Pumpkin Spiced.

At least I finally made a quinoa dish that doesn't smell and taste like a freshly mowed lawn.  I know it's a grass seed, but does it have to taste like it?  The tricolor I'm calling for is to give the mix some color contrast.  All of the ingredients are off-white, and plain white quinoa would make for a boring mass inside a leaf of lettuce.

60¢ of pine nuts, 75¢ of pintos

3/4 C tricolor quinoa
*1 Gala apple, diced
1/2 tsp dried sage
salt and pepper
1 lb chicken apple sausage, or ground chicken
*1/2 C diced onion
*1 rib celery, diced
2 Tb pine nuts
Lettuce leaves to serve

1.  Stir together dry quinoa, 3/4 C water, sage, and a dash each of salt and pepper.  Cover and bring to a boil over medium heat, lower to a simmer, and cook for 10 minutes, by which time everything else is going to be done.

2.  Heat a 10" skillet over medium heat.  Put pine nuts in the dry pan and sprinkle salt over them.  Shake every couple of minutes, while you're dicing the apple, onion, and celery and checking to see if the quinoa is boiling.  Once pine nuts are starting to brown, remove them from the heat and transfer to a container so you can use the skillet.

3.  Put chicken sausage in the skillet and brown, crumbling as you go.  Once mostly cooked, add onion, celery, and apple.  Cook, stirring frequently, until the quinoa is done.  Add to skillet and stir to combine.  Taste and add salt and pepper as necessary.  Toss nuts in at the last moment.

4.  Arrange large leaves of lettuce on plates and top with the stuffing.  Serve with the filling warm and the lettuce cold.

Difficulty rating  π