Good Fast Food: Pseudo-Tabbouli

Between the Deadline and the Move, we haven't had much time to shop or cook. Fortunately, our share of a CSA box keeps us in produce, but the other day we found ourselves with little to eat beyond carrots, garlic, and potatoes. Though we could have devised a meal from those humble ingredients, we didn't have time to prepare one.

Looking through the pantry, we found a jar of bulgur that had been ignored for a long time, waiting to

be made into tabbouli. We had no time for that, but we remembered that bulgur can be cooked in just a few minutes by covering it with boiling water. So we did that.

Once we had the hot bulgur, we improvised: a drizzle of olive oil, a few squirts of lemon juice, salt, pepper. We still had some mint, basil, and parsley in the garden, so we chopped a few leaves and tossed them in, along with some crumbled feta cheese.

We loved the result. Though it didn't have the pungent greenness of real tabbouli, which normally includes a hefty dose of minced garlic and scallions, it did have the basic flavors, and the higher proportion of bulgur resulted in a heavier, chewy salad that went well with the sudden influx of fall weather.

We'll make this again, even after the Deadline and the Move.