Tabbouleh flavored couscous(aka what I ate for dinner last night)

Couscous was the base of my food pyramid growing up.
Seriously, we ate so much couscous.

I work at a coffee shop. What does that have to do with a blog post about cooking food? I'll get there.

When you work as a barista, tips are kind of a big deal. The extra cash is awesome and you know you did your job well when you leave with a large roll of cash.

Thing is, not all tips are of the cash variety. Sometimes customers bring in random things. Sometimes it's flowers or maybe a gift card around Christmas, but the most random tip of all is food.

A little parsley, red onion and diced
grape tomatoes.

Yes, food.

I'm sorry, but I grew up in a society that inspected its Halloween candy for razor blades and other horrifying additions. Why the hell are strangers bringing me food at work?!?

And yet....while it took me awhile to get over my initial trepidation, I have come to enjoy the random gifts of food.

So now I will get to the whole point of this post. A few weeks ago, a customer brought some homemade Mediterranean food including really awesome tabbouleh. I have been craving more ever since.

This recipe is really a half-assed attempt at tabbouleh, but I didn't really care. I just threw in a bunch of stuff I had in my fridge but I think it turned out pretty delicious.

If you want the actual recipe, it was pretty basic.

• 2 cups couscous
• 1/2 bunch of parsley (this was in my fridge from the last time Mike made dinner so I used what was left)
• 1/4 red onion
• Several grape tomatoes (any tomato would likely work here, I chose grape tomatoes because I wanted more skin so that the chunks would hold shape better, instead of becoming mush)
• 1 lime
• 2 tablespoons olive oil



Noms.

• Salt to taste

I also threw in other green stuff from my fridge, including some cilantro (since I was already using lime, I figured I would just roll with giving this dish some Spanish flair) and kale. I put kale in pretty much everything these days. No mint. I didn't realize until after I was home and already chopping that most traditional tabbouleh had mint (at least according to the various recipes I was comparing with on the internet).

Dice up all the veggies and herbs, cook the couscous according to the directions on the package, mix everything up in a large bowl and squeeze the lime over it all.

Easy peasy.