100!

Wow, it's taken us years to get to recipe #100 on here. We should do better.

Anyway, I have a recipe, and it's a good one, nay, a GREAT one. It involves all the things you have on hand: barley and garden vegetables. Don't have barley on hand? YOU SHOULD. That is all. It is wonderful and nutty and delicious and nutritious and perfect.

You're going to look at this and think, "barley and veggies—meh," but not a person who has eaten it has a single negative thing to say about it. One of the missionaries the other night was snitching it out of the bowl after dessert. Yup, true story.

The great thing about this is that you can use any of your fresh vegetables in any amount you want. For example, our eggplants are coming on, and we fully intend to make a ratatouille-inspired version in a few short weeks with eggplant, tomato, onion, zucchini, and probably some rosemary or herbes de provence. Right now we have cherry tomatoes, zucchini, and onions, so that's what we're using. Here's the way we've been making it:

Barley Vegetable Salad

1 cup barley
2 cups chicken or vegetable broth [you can use water, but I would go broth on this one, for flavour.]

30-40 cherry tomatoes, cut in half
2-3 small to medium zucchini, diced
1/2 red onion, diced
1-2 cups spinach
2-3 oz. feta cheese
juice of 1 lemon

Bring broth to a boil and add barley. Reduce heat to low, cover and cook for 25-30 minutes, or until liquid is absorbed. Remove from heat, and let sit for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, chop your vegetables and give your zucchini and onions a quick sauté to bring out the sweet goodness in them. Combine all the vegetables and cheese in a large bowl, then dump the barley over them. Let it sit for a minute or two to wilt the spinach a bit, then stir together and season with lemon juice, salt and pepper.

Notes:

• If you use vegetables that need to be cooked longer, like eggplant, make sure you do that.
• Roasted vegetables would also be TO DIE FOR in this one. I can't even imagine how amazing this would be if I roasted those cherry tomatoes until they were fragrant and concentrated. I haven't tried it because I don't want to turn on the oven. True story.
• Add chopped herbs if your want.
• If you have a hankering, nuts, seeds, or dried fruit would also be appropriate and delicious.
• If you want it to be more like a salad, use more vegetables, if you want it to be more like a rice side dish, double the barley. We generally use just the one cup for our family, although we doubled it when we added the elders the other night.
• It's great as leftovers, like most flavour-infused things, and even good cold. Yum.