What we ate last weekend

So, last weekend we ate our first tabbouleh of the summer. I mention this here because this weekend we may eat our second. It's meant to be sunny again. I used to make tabbouleh a lot during and immediately after my years at hippy-dippy college. I haven't made it in a long, long time but we got some quinoea in our farm basket a week or so ago and I remember reading somewhere about making tabbouleh with quinoea so, that's what I did. Here's how:

1. Chop up a bunch of Italian flat leaf parsley and a bunch of spearmint. I think that for 2 cups of raw quinoea (which is a lot cooked) you want at least a cup and a half of chopped parsley and three-quarters or a cup of chopped mint. Chop, chop.

2. Decide what else you're going to add and chop that up too. I always add tomatoes and feta. I sometimes but not often add cucumber. In college I used to add blanched green beans which is not at all traditional but which I thought was pretty good.

3. Squeeze one or two lemons, you want about half a cup of juice. Add half a cup of good olive oil, the kind you use to make salad dressing, not the kind you use to saute zucchini in. (Sauteed zucchini would be good in this too, I think.) Add some salt. This is the only salt in the whole dish, so you want to not mess around. A good 2 or 3 teaspoons of salt is not too much. Add some pepper too.

4. Cook the quinoea. This is easy, put it in a pot, cover it with cold water by about an inch, bring to a boil then simmer for 20 min or so until it is cooked. You might have to drain some excess water off; that's fine, don't freak out.

5. Mix, mix, mix everything together and away you go. It's great and even Liam eats it.

I did the math today and realized that pretty much since some time in April I've been away from home for work at least two and often three days a week. That's a lot of days and I'm tired. Next week is back to Hanford for two days and maybe after that I'll catch a break for a week. In this economy, I want very much not to complain about having (knock wood and at least through June) plenty of work.