what to do with the pretty basil you bought at that cool Asian market...

Drew came to town last week as part of his 2009 festivities, so I met him, Ryan, and Chelsea at Dandelion Communitea, where we ate quinoa (how do they get those bagels so tiny?) and I became enamored with the idea of rescuing the illiterate and directionless youth of Brevard County mostly because Ryan has a pretty damned sweet job doing as much for a select group of Orange County students...

...all that to say that Dandelion Communitea is dangerously close to my favorite area of Orlando, the Asian shopping district at 50 and Mills (which probably has a real estate agent-friendly name that I don't know about, like NoCo or some absurdity). I know shopping for Chinese products flies directly in the face of Communitea's philosophy of supporting Tibetans in spirit and from afar with the power of the pocketbook, but I just can't keep myself from loving stainless steel bento boxes and unusual vegetables by the crateful.

So... yeah... I did bring home a pretty steel bento box like the one the grandpa loads up for his little neigbor in Eat Drink Man Woman, and I also nabbed a big bunch of Thai basil (un-greenly wrapped in saran wrap on a styrofoam tray - I'm killing me, here), which, when combined with the big bunch of cilantro I got at Publix and forgot about until I cleaned out the fridge as part of my own 2009 festivities, made for a really damned good black-eyed pea salad.

2009 salad

black-eyed peas leftover from New Year's Day
a whole bunch of basil
a whole bunch of cilantro
5 cloves garlic, smooshed
a hot pepper from the garden
olive oil
kumquat juice from the garden
salt

Yeah, just mix it all together and chill it. You're good to go. What, you need explicit amounts? Psh. You know me better than that, but you can probably take a look at the picture and determine the ratio of beans to herbs - maybe 2:1? As for the olive oil and kumquat juice (which you can easily switch up with lemon if you don't have a giant kumquat tree in your backyard), do it up like you would for a lettuce salad - I probably used 1/4 cup juice and 1/2 cup oil for maybe 4 cups of beans and 2 cups of herbs combined.

It was nice and spicy and good for the people in the house who are afflicted with sinus infections at the moment. We ate ours with pan-toasted tempeh. Delish, y'all.