Couscous Salad with Salmon

Enter Daylight Savings time and you'll get a big fat helping of laziness on my part around here!  So much so that I let the tomatoes I bought on Wednesday go bad... I had planned out a freezer friendly recipe to cook on Thursday.  Yeah, I froze the chicken thighs and used the ingredients I'd bought for other things.  I was going to use the tomatoes tonight in the couscous salad.  Boo.  Anyway... it turned out quite tasty this time around!  You really can add just about anything to couscous to make it your own.  And that is exactly what I did.  The best part... it took just minutes to have dinner together thanks to some salmon I had already cooked on Friday. Couscous salad - My version Inspiration came from the couscous package picture 1 cup couscous 1 cup boiled water 5 stalks broccolleti (young broccoli), trimmed  1/4 onion, sliced 1/3 red pepper, diced 1/4 cup sun dried tomatoes, diced roughly juice of half a lemon 2 TBls olive oil * salt and pepper to taste   Bring water to boil and then pour over couscous.  Cover and let stand for 5 minutes.  (These are the package directions.) Meanwhile, steam broccoletti.  I put a little bit of water in the bottom of the dish, sprinkled some garlic powder on the broccoletti, and then covered it.  Microwave it on high for 3 minutes. This is what broccoletti is.  It's baby broccoli.  I like it because it's tender and easy to work with.  This is actually the first time I bought it and I was trying to figure out things to do with it.  It was an impulse buy... and so far a good one.  I trim the ends off and the leaf looking things on the sides of the broccoletti. Prepare onion, red pepper, and sun dried tomatoes.  I had the red peppers left over from a pita pocket sandwich I made for lunch yesterday.  I really wanted to use tomatoes, but the red pepper and sun-dried tomatoes had to work. Fluff the couscous with a fork and add in vegetables.  Stir.  I stirred it with the fork still, but had a spoon on hand too.  The broccoletti kept getting stuck in the fork prongs! Add in salt and pepper to taste and the juice of half the lemon.  *I added two dashes of olive oil and stirred to finish.  I didn't measure it, just poured a little in and stirred it and kept tasting it until it tasted right. The olive oil just moistened the salad a little. The Verdict: A definite keeper.  I will keep this couscous on hand because it is SO EASY to use.  The options for add-ins are endless.  You can make it savory - add in snow peas, carrots, green onions, and some soy sauce and sesame oil for an Asian kick... add in any kind of vegetables for a spring or summer twist... add in chopped olives, tomatoes, and feta cheese for a Greek twist.  Make it sweet by adding some dried cranberries, cherries or apricots and some toasted slivered almonds.  Endless I tell ya.  Endless!   Add in some chicken or serve alongside the chicken.  It was delicious with the salmon.  Pork chops with a barbecue sauce or honey chipotle glaze would be great too.  Mmmm... my mouth is watering just thinking about it.  I'm going to add some feta cheese and tuna to the leftovers tomorrow for lunch.