More About Couscous

Well, I would love to report that I have jogged or hiked or walked or even skipped somewhere since my last blog but that would not be the truth. However, I'm super excited about the couscous I made for dinner tonight so that's all I'm going to blog about today.

So, I know, couscous isn't that exciting and I blogged about it last time. However, this is different. In the past when I've eaten couscous, I've always had it alongside fish. It was usually fish that I seasoned and cooked and often had an Italian-based flavor (basically garlic and olive oil). Tonight I made coconut crusted tilapia (store bought from Safeway, so I can't take credit for it but it was REAL good). However, the thought of the typical garlic, olive oil, and parmesean couscous didn't mesh, so I tried something I've never really tried before. Sweeter, olive oil-less couscous. How to make the couscous sweeter... hm... ?

Inspired by the Food Network show Chopped, I decided to had to make something with what was available to me. So I fished through the cupboards and found these remarkable ingredients... cinnamon, parsley, oranges, pine nuts, mozzarella, and honey. I figured mozzarella would be the sweeter cheese (choosing between mozzarella, edam, cheddar, & parmesean). Then I used a tiny bit of cinnamon and honey to sweeten and flavor the couscous, toasted the pine nuts, zested the orange, and chopped the parsley. Mix together and POOF, slightly sweetened cinnamon couscous. However, it was still savory enough that it was still good with a bit of salt and pepper. Looking back, I might use orange juice instead of orange zest because it was a bit chewy.

Also with my meal I had the last piece of my peachy pecan cornbread I made earlier in the week. This was another Good Housepeeking recipe that I thoroughly enjoyed aside from the fact that I think my pecans were a little dried out because they were rather bitter. But the recipe is exactly what it sounds like, cornbread, a can of peaches, peach juice, and pecans. Very southern. Very sweet-savory. Very moist, and oddly, very buttery in flavor (the entire pan of cornbread had 2 Tbps of canola oil and 2 Tbsp of margerine so I don't really understand where the butter flavor originated from.

Tomorrow night for dinner... roasted vegetable & turkey burgers. They will be bunless because I'm an idiot and didn't get buns at the store tonight. Still haven't made up my mind about the seafood pizza/goat cheese situation.