Pearl Harvest Couscous

Trying to finish off food in my fridge (specifically a soft feta cheese called Skotidakis Feta Crumbled), I purchased Quinoa for a specialty salad. Buying $11 worth of quinoa isn’t the thriftiest way to use up the cheese, but it was my way. Actually buying two packages of quinoa, one for the lake and one for home doubled my cost. I don’t want to do the math on that one. And worse, in the quinoa isle at Costco, there was a package of Pearl Harvest Couscous, so 1.5 kg’s of that went into my cart as well.

 ...eschew the pleasure of spontaneous purchases ...

It was only today that I decided to go backwards on this, using the Pearl Harvest Couscous up first. Mati joined me in the kitchen, hoping that couscous would be a grain. But no it is pasta shot out of a little gun, so that it looks like BB’s (a pellet approximately the same size as birdshot). Mati and I put on our science hats and began to read the packaging information. This was not just not couscous, but Israeli couscous to which was added Italian orzo pasta, baby garbanzo beans and red quinoa.


We boiled up a double batch to see what this tasted like. The tiny electrified red quinoa was popping up and down on the surface of the other ingredients, sliding along the sides of the plastic packaging and playing magic tricks when I tried to pour the product into a new container. Those little red quinoa are only ¼ the size of the other more regular quinoa I had purchased. And I am an expert on that now, as every time we ate it Bonnie was quoting stats on quinoa – where it is from, how it is grown and exported, and why it is popular now. Mati and I had to go to the ingredient list to figure out where the Italian orzo pasta was coming from – green ellipticals of durum semolina, dried tomato, dried spinach and rosemary. Most people just eat their pasta. Mati and I had to separate everything out and figure out why only 1/3 cup of this was worth 170 calories. That did not stop us from adding butter and Parmesan cheese.


Real Food for Real People. That is what the logo on the package said. “As opposed to what? Fake food for fake people”.


“That kind of soft sell is used even in Nepal,” said Mati. “I will always remember a big roadside sign there, on which was a large bottle of vodka and on the other half of the sign was a picture of Einstein. The text read Great brains drink alike. Go figure on that one.”


Fun in the kitchen and we still don’t have an idea of what to do with that soft, white curd-like feta.


Arta