Israeli Couscous is Amazing

Tonight's dinner was a mix of an old favorite I haven't made in about two years, and a new recipe. We'll start with the old standby in the bowl, mediterranean vegetable strata from "Regina's International Vegetarian Kitchen". It's a layered veggie dish that looks deceptively simple but is a lot of work. Two onions are sauteed in olive oil until browned and then tomato paste, turmeric, lemon peel, salt and pepper are added. This mixture is spread between each layer of veggies, and topped with fresh parsley and freshly ground black pepper, repeat with more veggies, more mixture, etc. The veggies are- eggplant, green bell pepper, potato, and carrots. This layering of veggies is done in a stovetop pot, and filled about halfway with veggie broth spiked with lemon juice, salt, and pepper. The top left dish is a recipe from "Veganomicon", pistachio and apricot Israeli couscous. This has Israeli couscous, toasted in fresh garlic and olive oil, then cooked in water with the zest of one lime, cumin, ground cardamom, salt, pepper, and one whole cinnamon stick. The last five minutes of cooking, you add pistachios, apricots, fresh chopped mint, and lime juice. Taking the lid off of this to remove the cinnamon stick and fluff the couscous confirmed this would be awesome before I even ate it. I loved this dish, and can't wait to eat it for lunch :)



A close up of all the goodness, about halfway through eating it.



Speaking of goodness... this tea is amazing. I love it- vanilla rooibos naturally caffeine free red tea. To me, it tastes just like vanilla coke, but less stringent and not fizzy of course. The whole bottle only has 10 calories, it's very low in sodium, and is sweetened with just a bit of brown rice syrup.

Unrelated to tea or couscous and perhaps rather morbid...as I type this up Bobby and I are listening to Feist on Pandora, and talking about how one day we're going to be old, and then one day we're going to die. I told him that's why we should have kids. To which he replied "so we'll be too busy to think about dying?". To which I replied "Exactly".