Colorful Greek-inspired rice-and-beans

Here's a very colorful dish that can feed a crowd.

Long before you will want to eat, bring to a boil

• 2 cups dried brown rice
• 3 cups water
• 1 tsp salt

and simmer covered 20-30 minutes, until the water has been absorber. Remove from heat, and allow to steam covered at least another 30 minutes. The rice will holds its heat for an hour.

Wash and shell

• 1 lb fresh black-eyed peas

to yield a little under a cup. When selecting black-eyed peas, prefer the plump yellow ones for ease of shelling. Beans will pop out once you remove the strings. Bring a pot of water to a boil, and blanch the beans about 2 minutes.

Wash and thinly slice

• 2 small heads of chard, one yellow and one read

Either blanch or steam the chard until it has reduced in volume and turned even brighter colors.

Combine rice, beans, and chard in a large bowl along with

• 4 oz feta (preferably a fresh goat feta, but we used a mix of amazing feta from Farmers' Market and awful crumbled feta from Trader Joe's (pdf))
• 1/2 lb pickled pitted olives, mixing kinds (we had about half kalamata and half provençal, from Cheeseboard)
• salt
• olive oil
• dried or fresh oregano
• lemon juice (or, in our case, the juice of one lime combined with a moscatel vinegar)

Serve warm. Serves three with leftovers as the only dish, or four with a bowl of ice cream to finish.