Tonight’s dinner featured quinoa eaten within 30 feet of where it was grown. Not too many Alaskans – or too many U.S. citizens, actually – can say that.

This was our first year of growing quinoa and it did quite well. It grew tall quickly and never actually flowered, but its colorful seed heads were lovely to look upon.

What we ate was based on a recipe called Chicken Enchilada Quinoa Bake. “Based on” because I nixed the cheese (DF isn’t a fan) and also the green chiles (didn’t have any). The enchilada sauce* was homemade, from the Budget Bytes recipe, because it’s so easy and so cheap to make.

The cheese- and chile-less version was delicious. What made it even more special was how we got the seeds from the stalks. We’d done some by hand, which is a laborious (though oddly contemplative) process. At some point DF suggested we look up quinoa harvesting machines. We found one, too, but the cost was $899.

So we kept looking – and found the Rube Goldberg-esque design of our dreams.

The blueprint, shared for free online by a British guy, looks something like a rat’s maze. You attach a vacuum cleaner to create suction, which pulls the chaff away from the seeds. Because they’re heavier, the seeds fall down. Mostly. (More on that in a minute.)

To put it together DF went to the thrift store for an art print covered with Plexiglas, to Home Depot for a couple of 8-foot-long pieces of primed fir and hardware, and to his workshop for some odd bits of lumber and plywood. Total outlay was $27, and he still has half the primed fir. (Buying more than he needed allowed him “room to make mistakes,” he said.)

He also went down to the basement to bring up the ancient Sears vacuum cleaner that usually is attached to the Flowbee DF uses to cut his hair. Sometimes I think I should call him “DIY” instead of DF.

Quinoa seeds falling

I call it “the quinoa baffler” because of the little triangular baffles on the left-hand side.

See the Plexiglas on the front? It was the perfect size and he found it at the first thrift shop he visited, which happens to be (a) right up the street and (b) affiliated with his church. Win-win-win.

Here’s how to use the baffler:

• Strip the dried seed heads off the stalks.
• Rub them between your hands to separate the heads into little fluffy bits (each of which holds multiple seeds).
• Turn on the vacuum cleaner and pour the seedy bits in slowly.
• Cackle like small children at the way the chaff flies off to one side and the seeds dance around before dropping into the bucket under the chute.

The sight of the clean seed falling was very exciting, which gives you an idea of what geeks find entertaining. At the suggestion of the unit’s designer we re-winnowed the chaff because some seeds did get sucked away. Ultimately we found that after four or five winnowings we’d gotten pretty much all the quinoa grains.

Our raised beds totaled 24 square feet, and we wound up with one quart of cleaned quinoa. Not bad, considering that the soil is only about six inches deep. The seed was free because I bought it with Amazon gift cards I earned from the Swagbucks rewards program; two packets were enough for the two beds plus leftover seed to give to a gardening (and vegetarian) neighbor family.

Next year we’ll plant at least three times as many seeds. “I’d love to have four quarts of the stuff,” DF says. Quinoa is very nutritious and stores beautifully. More to the point, it’s a protein we can grow rather than have to shoot or catch with a hook and line.

He’s already planning a Nerd Nite talk for next year. My suggested title: “Alasquinoa: The mother grain on the Last Frontier.” And he’ll save a couple of stalks so he can demonstrate the quinoa baffler. I expect that at least some of those nerds will be as tickled as we were.

*I make a double batch and freeze some. In addition, I cook up batches of black beans with cumin, garlic and olive oil and freeze them flat in bags. Since we often eat chicken, I’ve taken to cutting up and freezing some of every batch. When I’m ready to make this dish, most of the ingredients are already done; all I have to do is cook the quinoa.

Related reading:

• Always getting ready
• The low-maintenance preppers
• Grateful for sun and berries