Monthly Archives: June 2022

summer salads: tabbouleh with a twist

Posted on by

One of the things I like about summer, are summer foods. One of my favorites is tabbouleh. Essentially tabbouleh at its core is a parsley salad flavored with bulgur, mint, scallions, tomatoes, and a bright lemony dressing. It’s quick, fresh, easy, and totally yummy.

Tabbouleh is something I’ve always made in the summer, but as an adult in my own house I essentially make it only for myself unless we’re having company because no one else seems to eat it. Another problem in my house is while I work for myself and can set my own hours, my husband has a corporate job, and corporate jobs seem to have expanded their hours since the onset of COVID19, and the days of traditional 9 to 5 hour days seem to no longer exist. So he works a lot. Often he comes home from the office and works hours more in our home office and eats later. I don’t like to eat late, so tabbouleh the way I make it that I’m sharing with you today, is something I can eat for a quick summer dinner . I don’t even necessarily need to make meat or chicken to accompany it, I can just eat that “as is.”

Yes, there is a young adult living with us, but he’s kind of allergic to vegetables most days and eating with the other people in his house, so he will grab dinner and go sit in front of his computer screen and play video games. Often I will make the two of them something to eat and just leave it on the stove. No it is not my favorite thing to do as I don’t like eating by myself but life is what it is. So I have decided that I’m going to make things that I enjoy more in the summer to have if I am going to be eating early and by myself.

You will note when I share my recipe that I don’t have tomatoes in it, and I added chickpeas. The reason I didn’t add tomatoes is I don’t have any in the house and the ones I am growing in my garden are just plants at this point. I’ve also discovered that the salad stays a little more fresh if I don’t store it with tomatoes added. So if I make this with tomatoes I will often dress the top of the bowl with tomatoes that are diced and I will remove the tomatoes off of the top to put away.

Another thing about tabbouleh is you can indeed make it with couscous if you don’t have bulgar wheat.

This is a great summer salad and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do! To follow is the recipe.

1 3/4 cups bulgar wheat

Juice of 4 large lemons (maybe more – depends on you!)

A couple of dashes of apple cider vinegar

Olive oil

1 large bunch of Italian flat leaf parsley

1 bunch fresh parsley

Salt, pepper, dash of garlic powder, ground cumin

One large regular cucumber peeled, seeds removed, diced. Or one English hothouse cucumber peeled and diced.

1 sweet or red onion diced, or two bunches of scallions cut up small.

A 15 ounce can of chickpeas drained

Get out a large mixing bowl and to it add dry bulgar wheat, a little salt, a little pepper, a couple tablespoons of olive oil, and a teaspoon of ground cumin.

To that add about 1 1/2 cups boiling water, and toss. Cover the bowl with aluminum foil and put to the side.

In another mixing bowl, add your chickpeas, onion or scallions, parsley and mint chopped fine, and the cucumber. Add salt to taste. Toss it together and if you think it needs more salt add a little more. I add the salt slowly because you don’t want to over salt this.

And a small bowl add your lemon juice, cumin, small dash of garlic powder, salt, eyeball the olive oil and whisk together briskly. Give it a taste and you may want to add a couple of dashes of apple cider vinegar as well.

Bulgar wheat takes nothing to reconstitute with a little hot water so by now you should be fine and remove the aluminum foil from the bowl and give it another stir to fluff.

Add the vegetables and chickpeas and mint and parsley to the large mixing bowl with the bulgar wheat in it. Give that all a mix together and then whisk the olive oil lemon juice and apple cider vinegar mixture again and pour it evenly over everything in the large mixing bowl and toss together.

At this point you can taste test to see if you want more salt or ground pepper. Cover the mixing bowl and put in the refrigerator to chill thoroughly.

Leftovers are good for a few days. Keep refrigerated.

thoughts about the “welcome wagon”

Posted on by

This was left for a new resident of an East Whiteland Township neighborhood known as Spring Mill Farms in Malvern. I don’t know who the recipient of this horrible poison pen letter is, I don’t know who wrote the poison pen letter. But the bottom line is simple: this is freaking unacceptable.

Spring Mill Farms is one of the many developments in East Whiteland Township and I think dates back to the late 1960s. Really nice part of the Malvern area. But this development does NOT have a homeowners association or HOA. It’s just a few neighborhoods. It does have a civic association, but that is not the same as an HOA.

When I first moved to Chester County it kind of drove me crazy that people didn’t refer to the road on which they lived, they referred to the development. And as a newcomer I couldn’t keep up with what development was where, nor was that how I identified where someone lived. It still seems foreign to me. What is not a foreign concept is the reality of a nasty neighbor. And apparently there is one or more living in Spring Mill Farms.

Nasty neighbors are sadly a universal issue. And to leave an anonymous poison pen letter like this for a newer neighbor is well…WRONG.

Apparently the letter writer leads a very perfect life. My guess from the tone of the letter is that it’s probably a woman. I could be wrong but that’s the way things are phrased and the things that seem to bother this person. And they are literally telling these people how to place their trash cans, how their windows should be dressed, where the sports equipment for their kids should be, and essentially where the kids should be: in the backyard not seen by the public.

I don’t have neighbors like this. My neighbors are actually nice. Have I ever had crappy neighbors in my lifetime? Yes, who hasn’t?

Also, shock and horrors, this person apparently doesn’t like seeing BBQ grills. Basically this neighbor of Spring Mill Farms would like everyone and every thing placed neatly behind a hedge and to have shutters of distinction. Do you know who this neighbor is? If you do, by all means out them.

Years ago when I lived in Lower Merion Township and was considered a community activist and was also an early blogger, I sometimes had nasty anonymous notes like this literally stuck in my mailbox. I actually had a neighbor write an entire guest editorial to the Main Line Times signing all of her familial names with great pretentiousness directed at me.

The notes left for me in my mail were sometimes truly horrible. I was a bad person, who did I think I was, and more. I remember how horrible some of the notes were and how they made me feel at first. So I feel for whomever got this poison pen letter.

But to the recipient of this letter, I also suggest pink plastic flamingoes. And I would have them playing soccer or doing whatever sports the sports equipment you have set up in the front yard really represents. Fight the nastiness with humor.

To the scribe: when your neighbors expose you (and they will), perhaps apologize? Life is difficult enough without someone like you doing something so wrong like this. We all don’t have to love every neighbor, but this is just wrong.

To the civic association I say simply: deal with this.

in case devon horse show has any rain/thunderstorm delays and you need something to read…..best served with devon popcorn (naturellement)….

Posted on by

Well here we are, I guess a good way through Devon Horse Show and low and behold I received an email gift today: the filing against Eastown Township by The Devon Horse Show. The Right to Know Requests are being answered. Here is the original filing:

Devon-Litigation-2022_redactedDownload

But it’s been a minute so I also checked the Chester County court docket. And guess what? Found something interesting. “Removal to U.S. District Court”?

So what does this mean? The term “Removal” is the process of transferring a lawsuit filed in state court (or in this case, Chester County Court) to the United States District Court with jurisdiction over the same area. A defendant can remove a case from state to federal court by filing a notice of removal in federal court and then notifying the state court and the other parties. That means….yup….this Devon Case is now in fed court. Probably makes it more expensive too?

United-States-District-Court-Eastern-District-of-Pennsylvania-1Download

Yes, I have the filing, and will post it. But first the judge. The Honorable Nitza I. Quiñones Alejandro. It will be very interesting to see what she thinks of Devon’s litigation, don’t you think? She was nominated by President Barack Obama in 2012. She was confirmed in June, 2013. Here is a little video of her induction day:

From Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts:

Nitza Ileana Quiñones Alejandro is a judge on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. She is the first openly lesbian Latina to serve as a United States federal judge. She was also the first Latina to serve on the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas.

~ Pennsylvanians for modern courts

She is an interesting judge, and from what I have seen from researching her cases, fair, thoughtful, and equitable. I can’t help but wonder what she will think of Devon Horse Show’s litigation against Easttown. Will she see it as first world problems?

The thing about this case that I find curious me is the assertion by Devon Horse Show that Easttown Township has violated the 1st Amendment vis-à-vis the freedom of assembly and speech, and am I the only one? For me it is also amusing because one of Devon’s lawyers in this case is the very same person who wanted to deprive me of my 1st Amendment Rights in the Bishop Tube SLAPP suit where I was the named resident. (Eventually that was tossed. In county court and superior court.)

So how has Easttown Township actually violated the 1st Amendment? Are they saying to Devon Horse Show no you can’t have the horse show? I mean obviously not, because Devon is going on now, right? Is this in fact, all about what Devon has to pay for Easttown Township goods and services? How is asking an organization to pay for the municipal services it will be using for a special event wrong? Are the taxpayers of Easttown just supposed to foot the really big bill?

Get your Devon Horse Show Popcorn ready, this will be interesting….

May-Devon-Fed-Court-v-Easttown-1Download