Hello folks!
I find that I miss writing on this food blog, much as I love writing about choral music on my Behind the Music site. (Be sure to subscribe on the sidebar, and make plans to attend the concert that my choir, the Cherry Creek Chorale, is performing this coming weekend, October 15 & 16. If you do miss this one, our Christmas concert will be the next one. I will say that normally I’d be in the throes of planning the Friday-night post-conert reception this week, but we’re not having a reception for this concert. I have high hopes for Christmas, though) As the world is s-l-o-w-l-y opens up again I’m getting back into food events. There have been two recently that haven’t shown up on this blog; let me tell you about the one that took place just this past weekend, and I’ll save the other one for later.
I wanted to make a substantial version of tabbouleh for vegetarians. You can do pretty much what you want with this. I give a list of possible ingredients and you can add or subtract at will and to taste. Most tabbouleh recipes are very heavy on the chopped parsley, almost as if that ingredients is standing in for lettuce, but you don’t have to add that much. You could even, if you wanted to, add some shredded cooked chicken, if you have any sitting around that you want to use up, but this is such a good dish for vegetarians (and even vegans) that it’s probably good to leave it meat-free.
Sunday evening was a big get-together over at my in-laws’ house in celebration of four birthdays (mainly my father-in-law’s) and as a farewell to my son Gideon who is leaving for his internship in Seattle at the end of this week. Jan, my mother-in-law, was making pulled pork and various other things and wanted me to make something with sweet potatoes. I am on record as being totally opposed to sweet sweet-potato dishes, especially for Thanksgiving, as I think that they’re too much like dessert. (I always end up being overruled on this at Thanksgiving and people always love what Jan makes; what can you do?) But for this meal I got to choose, so I went looking for a savory sweet-potato dish. The following has been heavily adapted, so I have no problem with posting it as mine. The original recipe called for pancetta. Well, I thought, I’ll use bacon. Then I realized, far too late to do anything about it, that all of my bacon was in a solid block in the freezer. So I left it out. And I have to say, as a committed bacon lover, that it doesn’t need it. It’s also supposed to have a lot of fresh sage, which I didn’t have, and a lot less crumb topping. Gyp! So I doubled the crumb amount and put in more butter. That should make up for any calorie deficit from leaving out the bacon. This is really, really good. I promise.