Day Three Hundred Fifty Nine: Don't Mess With My Couscous

The grocery I frequent has an amazing prepared food section.  There they offer all sorts of prepared foods for you to take home and warm up, and lots of amazing cold salads:  chicken salads, pasta salads, and green salads of all types. (Some of you are familiar with this den of temptation called Central Market.) One of my favorite is a Israeli couscous salad.  It's made with those little couscous pearls and it's delicious.   :drool:    I dream about it from time to time.  I ran across Martha's recipe for Couscous Salad with Cherry Tomatoes and it looks suspiciously similar.

I had to try it.

You start by actually toasting the couscous in a small pan before cooking it in boiling water like pasta.  Once it's tender, drain it and rise until cool.  Then toss couscous, quartered cherry tomatoes, diced shallots, balsamic vinegar and a spot of oil in a bowl.  Let sit at room temperature for an hour then serve:

I took this photo before the couscous had marinated.  After an hour, it starts to turn a nutty brown color.

I'm going to go ahead and go out on a limb here:  this is better than my grocery version.  We've been compulsively eating it for a couple days now and it actually gets better the longer it marinates. My husband was a little put out when he found out I had eaten the last of it.

I will definitely be serving this again.  And soon.    

Six Days.....

Day Three Hundred Twenty Five: Gemelli Greatness

Last week I made Martha's Gemelli with Yellow Squash, Peas and Basil.  Not only did I want to (figuratively) throw a new pasta dish at my kids, but also I wanted to use that adorable gemelli pasta.  Seriously, has a double-helix ever been so cute?

This dish is easy to make:  cook the pasta until it's almost done, then add the veggies until they are tender.  Drain, then put everything back in the pot with a little butter and cheese.  It's easy and you only need to dirty one pot!  My kids loved it, despite the fact that peas and squash rank pretty low on their list of Tolerated Veggies.