Tabouli Salad and Resolutions

Posted on May 3, 2019 by Our Growing Paynes

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!

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

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

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.

Tomato Jam with Thyme

Posted on October 20, 2017 by Our Growing Paynes

I did this post last week, though I thought I did. But no one saw it, so I knew something was up. In the meantime I upgraded to the premium plan so my site is now ourgrowingpaynes.blog. As I was doing that I asked about this post. Turns out I created a site page instead of a blog post! Doh. Hopefully now I can get this back on track. 🙂

I am really regretting removing our air conditioners. Granted, it’s nice to have a longer growing season this year, but man, the humidity needs to go! While we don’t like it the tomatoes seem to love this. Which means we have to be creative is preserving all that goodness!

One of our favourite restaurants has a really good charcuterie plate and they very often have tomato jam as part of it. It’s something my husband regularly orders there and he asked if I could make some tomato jam at home. No idea how they make theirs but here is my version.

I have to say, prepping the tomatoes is a messy endeavor. But it needs to be done. Cut the tops off the tomatoes and then cut a cross into the bottom. Prep 2 1/2lbs/40ozs of tomatoes for this jam.

Blanch each tomato for about 30 seconds in boiling water.

Remove and set aside to cool. Or you can dip in cold water. I just let them cool. Doesn’t take too long. Remove the skins.

Then it gets really messy! Remove the seeds and coarsely chop up the tomatoes and add to a saucepan. Add a couple of tablespoons of lemon juice and a big handful of fresh thyme. I chopped up the thyme finely as I didn’t want large bits of herb in the jam. Bring the mixture to a simmer. Because I didn’t want a high sugar jam I just added 1 cup/8oz of sugar to start.

Mix well and keep simmering. I also use low sugar pectin to help thicken the jam. I didn’t want to mask the flavour of the tomato with too much sugar. I add a bit of the pectin at the time. Hard to remove it if you go too far!

This is really good with cheese and would be good with bread and butter. It’s a nice alternative to the usual berry jam. A reminder of summer when the cooler decides to finally arrive.

Mushroom Curry and I’m Getting Too Old for This!

Posted on November 7, 2016 by Our Growing Paynes

As I sit here and write this post, I ache from the neck down. Why? Because my husband and I seem to really like saving money by doing house projects ourselves. By last night we were seriously questioning our sanity. Our current project is redoing our lounge. We are hiring someone to do the drywall and mudding. So maybe we’re finally learning. Maybe.

But for three days this weekend we brought back the room to the studs. God the mess! It gets everywhere despite our best efforts of blocking off the room. Let’s just say me climbing in and out of the window is not the most graceful thing to behold. But I can’t wait for the room to be finished so it’s worth the effort.

As you can imagine, not a lot of cooking happened. No energy! But this is a curry I made a few weeks ago when my in-laws were visiting. This is a great dish for those that don’t eat meat. It is also very easy to make on those busy nights.

I made this on the mild side but you can easily turn up the heat with more chilis. Again I used my “Best-ever Curry Cookbook” but as you know I changed it up. Primarily because of the ingredients I had on hand. In a skillet heat up a couple of tablespoons of vegetable oil. Add about half an onion chopped and cook for a few minutes to soften. Add 4 cardamon pods, 1/4 tsp of ground turmeric, 1 1/2 tsp of ground cumin, 1 tsp of coriander, 1/2 tsp of garam masala, and a few pinches of black pepper.

Chop up 2 garlic cloves and one chili, cook for a few minutes. If you want this on the mild side remove the white and seeds from the pepper. Add about 10oz of chopped tomatoes. Season with salt and grate a 1 in/2.5 cm sq piece of fresh ginger. Bring it to a simmer. Half or quarter (depending on the size) of about 12 oz of mushrooms. I used white button mushrooms.

We also had this with the peshwari naan my husband made.

This was a lovely warming curry. My MIL, who isn’t the biggest fan of curry, really enjoyed it. 🙂

Aubergine Quinoa and Any Time is a Good Time for a Clear Out

Posted on September 2, 2016 by Our Growing Paynes

Every year we try to accomplish something with the house. Some years are more successful than others of course depending on what we have going on or how expensive the next set of projects are. This year we finished our closet and redid our son’s bedroom floor. But the big thing done is we did a massive clear out of the carriage house and the house itself.

I am convinced stuff multiplies. How else do we explain filling a 20 yard skip? Granted a lot of it was from the carriage house and old odds and sods left over from previous owners, the debris from our projects, that sort of thing. But it feels so good doing some serious organisation, rediscover what we have, and do some major recycling. We do try to fix, upcycle, and recycle before the last resort of throwing out. Plus we have loads of stuff for the Girl Scouts fundraising yard sale. It’s taken us all summer but it’s a big project to cross of the never ending list.

We’re starting to get some result from our garden. Of course it comes all at once! Our aubergine and tomatoes are coming in fast so it’s on to preserving and eating so none of it goes to waste. The aubergine we decided to grow this year is called fingerling, I believe, and they are small diameter and about 8in/20cm long. Perfect size for a small family.

I wanted to make roasted aubergine and roasted tomatoes with quinoa for dinner. The longest bit of this dinner is the roasting, everything else comes together quite quickly.

Preheat the oven to 400F/200C. Slice the aubergine and tomatoes and place them in a single layer into the baking dish. Drizzle with olive oil and season with sea salt and pepper. Roast until the veg is cooked through and begins to brown. While this is roasting cut up some chicken and begin to brown with olive oil in a skillet. Add about half a cup of chopped red onion and a few cloves of chopped garlic.

Cook the quinoa according to directions. It only takes about 15 minutes to cook so plan accordingly. Once the tomatoes and aubergine are done remove from the oven.

Slice up the aubergine and add the veg to the skillet with the chicken. Add 1/2 a cup of chicken stock and about 1/4 cup of white wine. I chopped up a small handful of fresh oregano from our garden.

Add the quinoa and about 1/2 a cup of freshly grated parmesan. Stir well and serve.

Top with more parmesan and enjoy! This is quite filling without being heavy and perfect to throw together after a day of projects.

Greek Orzo Chicken

Posted on February 7, 2016 by Our Growing Paynes

Finally I have a day off! It’s been about 2 1/2 weeks straight out with the first peak of tax season so I’m in my comfy clothes relaxing and recharging my batteries. And doing a long overdue blog post!

I was hoping to do one a few days ago but our silly dog had to be taken to the vet due to an ear infection. The poor thing was shaking his head so much I thought he’d run out of brain cells and he doesn’t have a surplus! He’d look at us with one ear up and one ear deflated. Cute looking but definitely needed to get seen to. I just wish they understood we are trying to help them. He did not like his ear being examined and kept backing away. I felt so bad but the meds are working and the ear is starting to be less deflated.

One of my food memories is eating orzo with chicken and green olives. I loved that dish. But I don’t have that recipe and since my family aren’t huge fans of olives I needed to find something different. In my “The Foods of the Greek Islands” cookery book by Aglaia Kremezi there is a recipe for Baked Chicken with Orzo. I changed it up a bit and did it on the stove top instead of the oven.

Greek orzo chicken 1 2016

This dish has a lot of strong flavours in this dish with the sundried tomatoes and garlic. In a large skillet heat up a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. Cube up about 3/4-1 pound of chicken and add to the skillet to start browning the chicken. Season with sea salt and pepper. Finely chop 3-5 cloves of garlic and half a red onion and add it to the skillet.

Greek orzo chicken 2 2016

Once the onion softens add a cup of sliced sundried tomatoes and saute for a few minutes. Then add a 14oz can of diced tomatoes with the juice and 2 cups of chicken stock and bring to a simmer. Toss in a small handful of fresh oregano.

Greek orzo chicken 4 2016

Add a cup of orzo. All I could find was a wheat orzo and that worked well.

Greek orzo chicken 3 2016

Stir well and simmer covered. Keep an eye on this as this can stick to the bottom of skillet. Add more chicken stock as needed until the orzo is tender and cooked. It takes about a 1/2 hour or so.

Greek orzo chicken 5 2016

Serve with parsley and shredded cheese. I had a mixture of Italian cheeses on hand. Of course there are good Greek cheeses to choose from.

This is definitely stick to your ribs dish, perfect for chilly winter nights. This made a lot of food so we have leftovers to use throughout the week.

Italian Style Burgers

Posted on September 9, 2015 by Our Growing Paynes

Labor Day is the unofficial end of summer in the states. Usually marked by BBQs and last trips to lakes and beaches. And it was hot this weekend! Thank goodness temps are looking to break tomorrow. I’m over the humidity and heat. I’m very ready for autumn.

Burgers was the main request for Monday night and we tossed around ideas of what to make so I could have a recipe to share. My husband mentioned it would be fun to stuff them with mozzarella. Sounded good to me!

I wanted to use oven roasted tomatoes for this recipe and that does need to be done ahead of time as it takes at least an hour. To prep the burger, finely chop a clove of garlic and mix with a couple of teaspoons of fresh thyme. Add it to about a pound of ground beef. Then add about a 1/3 of a cup of freshly grated parmesan cheese and a few dashes of balsamic vinegar. Season with sea salt and pepper. Mix everything together with your hands. The trick is to not overwork the meat but get everything evenly distributed.

Divide the meat into four portions and place a slice of mozzarella in the centre. Wrap the meat around the cheese. Do your best to seal the cheese in.

Grill them on a hot grill. While they are grilling prepare the topping for the burgers. I had some oyster mushrooms to use up.

In a small skillet heat up a bit of olive oil. Chop up the mushrooms and a clove of garlic. Saute for a few minutes and add the roasted tomatoes.

Add a bit of balsamic vinegar and bring to a simmer. Season with sea salt and pepper.

At the end of cooking add fresh basil. Top the burgers with the tomato mixture and grate fresh parmesan on top with a bit more fresh basil.

And if all goes right, it will be nice and melty inside. Melty, not sure if that is the technical term!

Add a side of grilled corn and it’s a great meal to say goodbye to summer. While I left off the bun, this is also good with a buttered grilled brioche bun. But that is a lot of food!

Bruschetta Chicken Salad

Posted on June 15, 2015 by Our Growing Paynes

It’s a lovely rainy day today. I say lovely because we’re still not having many of them. Optimistically we planted more seed to replace those that didn’t come up. Right now we have one leek and one onion coming up. Stand back and prepare to be overwhelmed!

For the life of us we can’t grow beets. We keep trying. In fact we had one come up a few weeks ago but it disappeared. So did the carrots! So we replanted and also sprinkled blood meal round the beds. I hope we start to make some progress.

The other night I was in the mood for Italian but nothing heavy as it was hot. I saw various ideas for bruschetta chicken which sounded wonderful. The drawbacks to the recipes was that they called for store bought dressings. It’s easy enough to make it from scratch.

In a bowl mix 2 parts olive oil to 1 part balsamic vinegar. Add fresh thyme and finely chopped garlic. Season with sea salt and pepper.

Add the chicken breasts to marinate for at least an hour.

While the chicken is marinating prep the bruschetta part of the dish.

Quarter the tomatoes and add a few cloves of finely chopped garlic in a bowl. Toss with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, sea salt, and pepper. The fresh mozzarella and basil should be added just before serving. Grill the chicken and the slice it to serve over a bed of lettuce.

As a side I also grilled up some veg to make a light supper. I love this time of year with all the fresh veg. Not so much the heat but you can’t have it all!

Pollo a La Española

Posted on March 26, 2015 by Our Growing Paynes

If you are a parent you know watching your kids grow is fascinating, sometimes frustrating, and most of the time a wonderful thing to watch. You also know it isn’t a continuous curve of growth. They’ll tick a long and suddenly there is a leap forward.

Our daughter tried out for the Honors Band for our state. They pick the best 8th graders to participate. Last week they had the day of rehearsal and they practice all day long before the concert. A lot of hard work went into the pieces they performed and I was blown away at how well they did. The music was very technical and sounded excellent. I was sitting there thinking how far she has come in just a few years. She is really coming into her own on so many levels. It is a joy to watch.

Our son has been making leaps of his own. We had a great parent teacher conference last week. He’s seeing the result of hard work in his report card and his teacher is encouraging him to speak up for the class. Apparently a student at school was wiping the white board and posters have gone missing. So the principal made an announcement to the whole school that the 5th grade can no longer move about the school without a teacher. My son thought this terribly unfair so his teacher is encouraging him to meet with the principal to discuss this. What a great opportunity! His teacher said to us that he was confused about the way the issue has been handled so we are all curious what the answers are going to be.

On to the food! 🙂

I bought some chicken thighs to do a Spanish dish called Pollo a La Española that I found in a cookbook I found at our library sale. It’s called The Complete Spanish Cookbook by Pepita Aris.

It’s a mild but flavourful dish and relatively easy to make during the week when it is hectic.

Preheat the oven to 350F/175C.

In a large skillet heat up a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. Rub paprika on all sides of the chicken thighs and season with salt and pepper. Pan fry both sides to brown.

Place in the oven to finish cooking. In the skillet add about 3/4 cup of finely chopped onion, 3-4 cloves of garlic chopped, and a 1/2 cup of pancetta. I use uncured pancetta and sometimes it doesn’t have the full saltiness. Just something to keep in mind when adjusting the seasoning.

Cook until the onions soften then add a 14 oz can of diced tomatoes and a few teaspoons of fresh thyme. I added this because we didn’t have any parsley like the recipe called for.

Stir and bring to a simmer. Add about a cup of chopped bell peppers. I love how colourful this dish is.

Adjust the seasoning with paprika and the salt and pepper.

Serve with rice of your choice and enjoy!

On a side note, it seems I can no longer do my posts in the classic mode. Not thrilled with that and I’ve noticed that pictures I post are showing as smaller than they showed before. The files sizes are the same as before. Any idea on how to fix that?

Home Cooked Food – A Cure for Long Travels

Posted on December 17, 2014 by Our Growing Paynes

It’s been a very busy year for my husband with business trips and he just did two weeks to close out the year. It was a tricky time though, what with the kids’ Christmas concerts, teacher conferences, and the like. Thank goodness for technology as I was able to record a few of the songs the kids did and we could have him on speaker phone so he could be part of the conference. Which is wonderful as he hates to miss this stuff.

As you can imagine he misses the home cooked food as well. Two weeks of sandwiches and so so hot food begins to wear a person down. So a special meal was called for. I was ready for it too because the second week was a kid free week and I don’t really cook for myself so it was fun to get creative again.

For the first course I did a cheese plate and opened a bottle of a lovely red wine. For the second I wanted to have some of his favourite ingredients. Roasted parsnips and pan sauteed Brussels Sprouts were no brainers.

At Thanksgiving I was able to pick up beef tenderloin from the farm where I got the turkey. I now have more of an appreciation of the labour that goes into perfect looking filet mignon. My knife skills being what they are mine didn’t come out perfect but they weren’t too bad. But there is definite room for improvement!

I purchased some grape tomatoes and I sliced them in half. On a baking sheet add the tomatoes, pieces of garlic, drizzle with olive oil, season with salt and pepper then bake at 300F/150C.

Bake for about 45 minutes. Unfortunately the garlic didn’t cooporate and for some reason they came out hard as rocks. So I chopped up more garlic, added some more olive oil into a skillet then sauteed this with the tomatoes. Meanwhile broil the beef seasoned with salt and pepper to medium rare. For meat that is 2 inches thick do 5 minutes on each side. Mine was thinner so I did it for less. Then rest the meat for at least 5 minutes. While the meat is resting, add a handful of shredded basil to the tomatoes and a squeeze of lemon juice.

Top the beef with the tomato mixture and serve.

It was such a lovely evening catching up with my husband. I miss him when he’s gone and there is always so much to share. Of course I had to step back to make room for the homecoming the dogs gave him! Goodness me it was like a pair of dolphins leaping about, quivering with excitement. He was licked within an inch of his life! LOL.

Lamb and Parsnip Curry

Posted on November 10, 2014 by Our Growing Paynes

After leaving the warmth of Texas I needed to make a warming dish. We could see snow this week, hopefully it’s just a dusting. With a prediction of another harsh winter, it can take its time arriving. I wish autumn didn’t go by so fast.

A curry would do the trick. Not only did the co-op have some lamb they also had some parsnips which I thought would be a nice pairing.

I chopped up half an onion and 4 cloves of garlic. I sauteed them in avocado oil for a few minutes to soften then added about a cup of chopped parsnip. Cook for a few minutes more.

Add diced lamb to brown. Then add 2 cups of vegetable bouillon and bring to a simmer. Be careful how “hard” you simmer because you don’t want to toughen the meat. It can be a balance depending on how much time you left yourself to cook the dinner. Reduce the broth by at least a third.

For seasoning I added a few spoonfuls of Red Thai Chilli Paste, 1-2 tsp of ground tumeric, 1 tsp of garam masala, a bit of cumin, and salt and pepper to taste. Add some chopped pepper, mushrooms, and fresh cilantro. Just as it finishes cooking add a few grape tomatoes that have been halved. Stir well and serve over basmati rice.

It was warming and delicious, just what we needed with the temps getting lower and lower!

Our Growing Paynes

A journey about cooking, traveling, gardening, and crafting.

Tag Archives: tomatoes

Tabouli Salad and Resolutions

Technique for Tabouli Salad

Tabouli Salad

Ingredients

Bulger Wheat

Salad Ingredients

Dressing

Instructions

Bulger Wheat

Fresh Ingredients and Dressing

Tomato Jam with Thyme

Mushroom Curry and I’m Getting Too Old for This!

Aubergine Quinoa and Any Time is a Good Time for a Clear Out

Greek Orzo Chicken

Italian Style Burgers

Bruschetta Chicken Salad

Pollo a La Española

Home Cooked Food – A Cure for Long Travels

Lamb and Parsnip Curry