Tag Archives: cucumber

Tabouli Salad and Resolutions

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We’ve forgotten what the sun looks like in our area. Mother Nature has taken the April Showers bit very seriously, enough to continue into May. Really hope there will be a plethora of flowers soon! Even though the weather calls for a lot of comfort food, sometimes bright light food lets me pretend it’s a lovely spring. Tabouli Salad fits the bill with the fresh ingredients and flavour.

I’m not one for resolutions. We all know how long they can last, we’re lucky if it’s the end of January. But after several years of working on my mental health, injuries, etc, it was time to work on the physical stuff and lose the weight I gained from meds I was on. A big key was doing food bowls with various healthy choices to mix and match so I wouldn’t get bored. Tabouli salad is a great addition to this.

For this version I went heavy on the bulger wheat as some of the ingredients are quite strong and if I was going to be in a small cubicle with clients I couldn’t have dragon breath. I mean, dragons are cool if you are in Games of Thrones but not when you want clients to come back. The recipe will reflect the usual balance rather than what is shown in the photos.

Technique for Tabouli Salad

The bulger wheat needs to be prepped first. You can either boil the wheat for 12-15 minutes or add boiling water to the wheat, cover and let steam for 45 minutes. I tried both ways and they work but the steaming gives it a better texture.

Add the wheat to a bowl and add boiling water until it’s about 1/2in/1.5cm above the wheat. Cover with a tea towel and let steam for about 45 minutes or until all the water is absorbed.

While the wheat is steaming prep the fresh ingredients. I used parsley, tomatoes, cucumber, mint and scallions. You can add other ingredients such as celery or garlic. For the tomatoes discard the seed pulp. Chop all the ingredients into small bits. Mix the dressing and toss the ingredients and set aside until the wheat is ready.


Rinse the bulger wheat with cold water and drain. Toss with the other ingredients. It’s ready to serve but when not serving keep it covered and chilled in the fridge.

I enjoyed it with a soft boiled egg and smoked salad. Brain food!

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Tabouli Salad

A fresh flavourful salad is a great choice for dinner or food bowls.

Course Salad
Cuisine Mediterranean
Keyword Tabouli Salad
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 45 minutes
Total Time 55 minutes
Servings 8
Author Our Growing Paynes

Ingredients

Bulger Wheat

  • 1 cup bulger wheat, coarse
  • Boiling water, enough to cover wheat

Salad Ingredients

  • 1 cup chopped parsley
  • 3 roma tomatoes
  • 1 cup chopped cucumber
  • 2 scallions, chopped
  • 1/4 cup chopped fresh mint

Dressing

  • 1/4 cup lemon juice
  • 1/3 cup olive oil
  • sea salt
  • fresh ground pepper

Instructions

Bulger Wheat

  1. Boil water.  Pour over the wheat until it’s covered by about 1/2in/1.5cm.  Cover with a tea towel and let stand for 45 minutes or until the water has been absorbed.  Rinse with cold water and drain.

Fresh Ingredients and Dressing

  1. Mix the fresh ingredients and dressing together.  Set aside until the wheat is cooked and drained.  Toss everything together.  It is ready to serve.  Store in the fridge covered.  

Stuffed Cucumbers and If It Looks Like a Duck and Walks Like a Duck…

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I’m not a conspiracy theorist by any stretch of the imagination but there are times when the military or government are so blatant it beggars belief.  About 2pm on Wednesday afternoon there was a massive boom that shook all the homes over several towns and it lasted just a second or so.  Because it snowed the night before a lot of us thought snow was falling off our roofs but as we only got an inch and most of it melted by then we were very quickly puzzled about what the hell just happened.  It felt like a truck hit the house.

So of course a lot of people were circling their homes and businesses looking for damage.  What was it?  A sonic boom.  Which is illegal over populated areas.  So the MA National Guard are saying it was just normal jet noise.  The only ones that seem to believe that are the people at the MA National Guard.  It isn’t the fact it was a sonic boom that bothers me, though given how it freaked out our dogs I’m ok without the booms, it’s the fact they are lying about it.  I mean, give over people.  Guinness was very needy for about 24 hours.  Murphy was just fine in his armchair of choice.

Fortunately this past Sunday was much quieter.  We got the family together to celebrate a few birthdays and we did a sort of tapas lunch.  Loads of flavours but not a ton of cooking required.  My mum loves peaches so we did up some peach bellinis which was fun and went down very easily!

I came across a recipe for cucumber feta rolls that looked interesting and I did a variation of those for Sunday.

I decided not to make them into rolls as it would be less messy and I wouldn’t have to worry about toothpicks making their way to the floor then into the dogs.  So I sliced the cucumber into 3/4″ or so slices then hollowed out the top.

Stuffed cucumber 4 2014

My husband found some locally made feta cheese that was quite nice.  Crumble about 4oz and add a few dollops of plain greek yoghurt.

Stuffed cucumber 1 2014 Stuffed cucumber 2 2014

Slice up a few pieces of sun dried tomatoes.  It’s on my list this summer to try to make some with the tomatoes from our garden.  Should be an interesting experiment!

Stuffed cucumber 3 2014

Mix with the cheese and yoghurt, add some chopped oregano and salt and pepper.  Squeeze a splash or so of lemon juice and stir it together.  My husband and son don’t like olives so instead of chopping the kalamata olives and mixing them in I just topped most of these with a slice of olive.

Stuffed cucumber 5 2014

Very easy to make for a dinner party or for a healthy snack.  And I do love the pairing of sun dried tomatoes and olives.