(Delicious!) whole grain salad recipes

Since Summer is the season for salads, and whole grains are delicious and healthy, I thought I would post recipes for a trio of tried-and-true salads. I'm also posting an "Asian Slaw" from Every Day Food.

The interesting thing is that these whole grain salads were in the July 1994 issue of Gourmet - way before quinoa and couscous were sold in a regular store in 2009 - very prescient of the editors.

These all do well if you make them the night before (and the slaw improves if made the night before), just don't add the parsley or basil until the day of. They do involve a fair amount of chopping and cooking of the grains - you need to put the grains on to cook first, and then start chopping.

I realized that a great secondary recipe could come out of making all these salads - you already have onions, lime, jalapeno peppers, cilantro - if you buy some tomatoes you can easily make salsa with only a few more slices of the knife.

To avoid re-posting published material, I am linking to the recipes on Epicuruous. Ignore all the "I made it exactly like the recipe only I changed these six ingredients" reviews on Epicurious, the recipes are delicious as is.

Couscous Salad with Peppers, Olives and Pine Nuts

Wheat Berry and Barley Salad with Smoked Mozzarella
You can use CSA chives, corn, tomatoes, and scallions

Quinoa and Black Bean Salad
CSA cilantro!
I followed Mark Bittman's method for cooking the quinoa (which seemed similar to rice/couscous, ie twice as much water, bring to boil, cook for 15 minutes), rather than their rather crazy 5 rinses of water.

Asian Cabbage Slaw
A good use for cabbage. I like it better the next day or even two days after