Pot Luck Tabbouleh with Feta and How to Chop a Lot of Herbs Easily

Feed a crowd at a summer gathering with this vegetarian salad that shows off the flavors of summer. Packed with herbs, tomatoes, cucumber, feta, and chewy bulgur wheat grains lightly coated with lemon juice and olive oil this side dish can sit on a buffet table and keep its flavor.

For other recipes using a massive bounty of herbs, please see my Herb Recipes Collection. For other recipes using Cucumbers, please see my Cucumber Recipes Collection. For other recipes using ripe red tomatoes, please see my Red & Yellow Tomato Recipes Collection. These collections are part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating from the farm share, the farmer's market, or the garden abundance. For another kitchen hack please see my Sun Gold Tomato Panzanella.

Normally I'm just cooking for our family of four so when I go bigger with a recipe that works for a crowd, and also uses the produce from the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share, I want to share with the rest of the class. I've done it before with my Pot Luck Asian Chicken Cabbage Salad.

The First Tomato of Summer [yes, worthy of capitalization if you're like me and just don't buy fresh tomatoes November through June] needs something worthy to celebrate its arrival [then you can move on to the weekly Summer Tomato Sandwich]. I'd been eying my unruly mint patch and craving tabbouleh--oh, my mommy pronounces it tah-BOO-lee so that's what I say--so I picked up a package of bulgur and gathered my goodies. I followed the directions on the package and used Bob's Red Mill Red Bulgur (Amazon affiliate link). No sponsorship--I tell you the brand name because the recipe I started with came from the back of the package and because I'd never tried red bulgur before. Usually I buy it in bulk somewhere, and since I know the company name I thought I'd share. The product did work great, though, if you're looking for bulgur. I picked mine up at the grocery store down the street.

That tabbouleh was all I'd hoped for--bright and fresh with all the herbs, tangy but not gloppy from the dressing, crunchy from the cucumber, chewy and filling from the wheat. Plus the flavor of a local tomato picked when ripe and grown for flavor, not travel ability. /rant.

After the success of that tabbouleh I thought it would be good with feta, and with loads of herbs still to use I was looking for an excuse a reason to make more. Lots more. Cue marching band camp--filled with hungry teens, who arrived promptly at 11:30 each day and, like polite locusts, left the serving area decimated 10 minutes later. The band has both vegetarians and kids with sophisticated taste, as well as my kid (I shouldn't rag on him, but he's delighted with leftover concession stand hot dogs . . .). I knew it would not be ignored. One musician came back for seconds 3 times! That's probably not called seconds, but you know what I mean.

Spicy Corn and Sweet Potato Chowder

A creamy soup of corn and sweet potatoes cooked in corn stock and spiced up with chorizo. A wonderful way to enjoy the bounty of late summer vegetables.

For other recipes using corn, please see my Recipes Using Corn Collection. For other recipes using sweet potatoes, please see my Sweet Potato Recipes Collection. These collections are part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating from the farm share, the farmer's market, or the bounty of the garden.

One of my current failings with raising kids is my lack of follow through. [There's a corn cob connection here, but I'll meander first. Skip ahead to the recipe if you're squeamish.] I've got the "give your children chores" part down, I'm not always thorough on the follow up to see that the chore has been completed. Some chores are easy to follow through on--taking out trash, putting away clean laundry, clearing the table, walking the dogs.

My kids are in charge of emptying the compost bucket into one of the compost bins outside. Because an empty bucket comes back into the kitchen, I assumed the task has been satisfactorily completed.

Then I took Robert Barker on his morning walk and noticed what appeared to be chewed up corn cobs. Guess what? Corn cobs don't get digested, either. [That's the squeamish part, I'm deliberately being vague.]

Still, I didn't put it all together until my girl told her brother "just don't throw the compost, put it in the bin!" Aha! Apparently the raspberry canes had grown so much that he stopped bothering to lift them out of the way like she did. I sent him out with trimmers and now the path is clear and the compost is going into the bin.

Follow through--something I need to work on.

Sun Gold Tomato Panzanella with Mozzarella and Capers

Cherry tomatoes tossed with cubes of bread to soak up the luscious juices, seasoned with capers and marinated mozzarella. This salad is an excellent, fast, and easy addition to summer entertaining.

This tomato bread salad with mozzarella and capers makes a terrific meatless main dish in the summertime, as well as an excellent addition to a summer cookout or potluck.

It is easy to throw together at the last minute. Why? Here's a kitchen hack for you:

If you have unsliced bread--from your oven, your bread machine, or your local bakery--you know how hard it is to slice the last couple of inches? STOP DOING THAT. Cut it into cubes instead, and store those bread cubes in the freezer. 

Having bread cubes on hand comes in pretty handy. In the winter I make Panade, in the summer I make panzanella, and one of these days my son is going to make croutons on the grill. Or so he claims. Teenagers.

Besides the bread cubes in the freezer, this salad also uses cheese, capers, and vinaigrette that can all hang out for weeks in the fridge. This means it's an excellent last minute recipe--when I've got onion, basil, and of course the star of the show--cherry tomatoes.

When I get a pint of cherry tomatoes in the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share I usually snack on a few bunch on the way home, then my spouse snacks on them if he's around--and otherwise they need a job. The kids aren't snacking on them. Throwing together a salad like this takes care of a pint quickly, though you can always use chopped regular tomatoes if that's what you've got. 

Now the photo above is this week's pint from the farm share. The tomatoes in the salad were from last week's share, and were all Sun Gold tomatoes (like the lil' orange one in the photo above). I just didn't get an ingredients shot since I was throwing the salad together minutes while a cake was baking and we were fixing to go to a cookout. A very last-minute dish, but since the cake took longer than I expected I snapped some photos of the completed dish.