My Brush with Bulgur | Recipes, Please!

A while ago a friend gave me a bag of bulgur. Interesting gift, you say?

I must have looked a little quizzical, maybe even cross-eyed, because she gathered herself up and said, "Well, I know you like to cook and I was at this bulk food store and you said you liked tabbouleh, so I got you some."  (Note to self: Practice poker face, especially when presented with surprise gifts by well-intentioned friends.)

It's true I love tabbouleh -- cucumbers, mint, lemon, tomatoes --  and bulgur.

This pound of bulgur -- minus the two cups I've used in the past year to make said beloved tabbouleh -- is taking up valuable pantry space, though.  I don't love tabbouleh enough to make it every week. (And it's not beloved by Mr. Rosemary, either.)

So, onto to a search for a warm bulgur-based side dish.  Maybe you've become lazy like me, and despite the fact that I have an embarrassingly large cookbook collection, I often end up searching the Internet instead of going to my own library of books, as well as my healthy pile of "gonna try" recipes I've clipped or copied.

I searched my own files and came up dry. Not quite all the ingredients for that one. Or that one either.

In the end, I did go to the Internet and found one that I could use. I had all the ingredients, even the dried mushrooms and a bit of leftover wine.

Started out great:  the comforting aroma of onions and mushrooms sauteing with a bit of garlic, then the wine and broth reducing.

But in the end, it was pretty bland.  To perk up the color, despite the welcome pop of carrot, I added some chopped spinach just until it wilted.

And it looks pretty good, doesn't it?

But it remained merely meh. (Is there reason bulgur rhymes with vulgur?)

So here I am, with a year's worth of bulgur and months til tabbouleh season.

Any tried and true bulgur recipes out there?