Friday, September 01, 2006

Quick healthy dinner...

What a dreary day! The storm formally known as "Ernesto" has been giving us rain all day long - but nothing really too heavy yet. The high today didn't even go above 60 - brr! It's going to take awhile to get used to this again after living in Phoenix for a couple years. Since any outside plans were not going to happen, I ended up making another batch of the new hamburger rolls. I was going to make the recipe we used to use to compare them, but Jeff said not to bother as these were better. Although, picking a recipe where I would be kneading for awhile probably was not the brightest idea after doing weights this morning... really sore arms now!

We are spicing things up for dinner tonight with the recipe South of the Border Couscous Salad. I used whole wheat couscous that I had in the pantry, but I think Quinoa or Bulgar would work just as well. The nice thing about couscous is that it takes just minutes to cook and you can flavor the cooking liquid however you like. I used vegetable broth, water, a bit of granulated garlic and a dash of cumin for some smokiness. The combination of black beans, fresh corn, cilantro and a mildy hot jalapeno bring the "South of the Border" twist to this salad. To brighten the flavors in the dish, fresh lime juice is added at the end, along with a couple splashes of olive oil to keep the grains moistened and separated. Healthy, clean tasting and pretty filling, we both had only good things to say about this salad. Since it comes together so quickly, you could easily prepare this in the morning to give some time for the flavors to mingle and have lunch or dinner waiting for you when you come home.


8 comments:

  1. Joe! You need a Kitchen Aid mixer! Go out and buy one right now! Seriously, I make all of our bread, rolls, pizza dough, etc. and my Kitchen Aid is worth it's weight in gold for that. No more tired arms. It does an excellent job with bread dough and it's a lot less messy. Go get one today!

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  2. Everyone seems to be into making jams these days.

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  3. I miss cous cous! I wonder if this dish would translate well using quinoa? [Gotta be gluten free, unfortunately.]

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  4. wow, looks simple and delicious. i love couscous, but cornelius doesn't, so maybe i'll try out another grain.

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  5. Pat - I have one actually, but I love the hands-on approach when making any type of bread. It's just a thing I guess!

    Wheresmymind - huh!

    Karina - I mentioned Quinoa would be good swapout for the couscous - you may need to tinker with the liquid/cooking time!

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  6. Kickpleat - I want to try this with Quinoa - would that fly with Cornelius?

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  7. Oddly enough someone from work brought something extremely similar to this in today for our putluck.. heeeyyy- are you sure you don't work with me?? isn't your REAL name christi?

    haha I knew it ;)

    teddy

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  8. Thanks, Joe! Sorry. Somehow I missed that. [Must have been reading without caffeine. ;-)]

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