Tabouli

This is Arkansas graduate-student Tabouli more than the traditional sort; but you still eat it with pita bread.  It's really, really good when you're living in a graduate student shack with no air-conditioning (or an AC you can't afford to turn on) in the middle of an Arkansas summer.

Ingredients:

Two cups bulgar wheat, cracked

Some tomatoes, homegrown from your neighbor's garden are best

Some onions, ditto

Cucumbers, yep

Optional: parsley, mint, other greeny bits

Olive oil

Salt

Pepper

Take two cups of the bulgar wheat; put it in a large glass bowl or something big and glass. (I had a big pyrex dish I used.)  Dump in two cups of boiling water.  Filter this water first if you live somewhere where the water is nasty.

Let the water and wheat mix sit covered for awhile -- half hour to an hour.

You can use this time to chop your onions and tomatoes and cucumbers into bits.  I like fewer onions and more cucumbers and tomatoes, so I use two tomatoes and two cucumbers and just a quarter of an onion, or if I'm using leeks, one leek, but feel free to mess with proportions.

Mix these into the wheat and water, along with some salt and pepper.  If you want to add mint and parsley, you can.  Chop them up tiny first.  I never liked the flavor, so I never did, plus, yikes, pricey, at least the mint is, and this is a pov case dish, except for the oil, so they sort of defeat the purpose.  But if I liked the flavor you can bet I'd add them.

Add a half a cup of good olive oil.  Yes, I said a half a cup.  Do it!  Olive oil is good for you!

Stir, stir, stir.

Chill for awhile, covered, in the fridge.  The tabouli, I mean, though you can chill, too.  Have a rum & lime out on the stoop!

Serve with pita bread and beer and lime, or ice tea if you've got an early class.