|why you need an herb garden|

Last weekend, we went out to the local greenhouse and bought the goods for a little herb garden in our front yard. We bought starters of basil (two kinds), parsley, mint, cilantro, and rosemary and put them down in large pots. It's been a little chilly all week, so we've dutifully been brining them in and out of the garage. My car is wondering why it's been relegated to the driveway - but I'm happy to report it's all totally worth it.

Tonight, we kicked off herb season with a bang. My husband went out and harvested (can you say harvested when it's just pots on your front porch? that seems a bit pretentious) about 1 cup of parsley and 1/4 cup of mint.

I chopped up all of the following and threw it together in a giant bowl:

• Romaine lettuce - about 8 leaves cut into long strips
• 2 tomatoes, 1 cucumber, 1/2 red onion - diced small
• Parsley and mint

For the dressing, we did about 1/4 cup olive oil and 1/2 cup lemon juice with some salt and garlic powder.

Toss it all together with some ground sumac (a couple tablespoons), some ground pepper, and crumbled up pita chips and you have Fattoush - one of my all time favorite salads. It's Lebanese. Thank God for Lebanese food (see also: tabbouleh and labneh). I think the real deal is supposed to use scallions, but I prefer red onion.

• We didn't have pita chips on hand, so we baked up some tortillas with sumac on them.
• What is sumac, you ask? It's apparently a berry that they dry in the sun and then grind up.
• I can't even imagine how amazing this will taste in the summer when all these veggies are at the height of their goodness.

We went to the Derby Festival this weekend and I ate WAY too much junk food, so this salad made my body body happy. I'm off to drink my weight in V8 now.