Caesar Pasta Salad

When school first started last month, Kenzie and I had grand plans to make tons of salads to bring for lunches.  No leftovers for us - just salads.  Probably in mason jars.  And fresh fruit and huge jugs of water maybe with a few sprigs of mint and lemon slices.

Real life now that we've been back at the grind for over a month?  Well let's just say my lunch today consisted of a store-bought granola bar, a pear, and some leftover lentil dal (recipe coming!).  Water, minus the mint and lemon.  No mason jar to be found.  And that's okay.  Leftovers are delicious and I don't even like mint that much.

But that first week, with our overzealous salad makings, we stumbled upon this salad.  Imagine combining caesar salad with pasta salad, and voila: you have caesar pasta salad.  There's everything from croutons and tomatoes and romaine lettuce to penne and, if you choose, chicken (I left it out, of course).  You make your own caesar dressing, too, complete with anchovies and everything.  Or, if you're freaked out by that like me, you can leave them out and just double the Worcestershire sauce.  Don't worry, the dressing is super flavorful without it.  I also swapped out the mayonnaise for Greek yogurt, as I always do.

The end result is a creamy, tasty pasta salad that reminds you vaguely of caesar salad but is way more fun.  I was a little worried at how the leftovers would be for our lunches, but it was still good one day later (and that was all that was left).  I am not sure how long the lettuce would stay good with the dressing, but I think the pasta helps by absorbing a lot of the extra moisture.  Perfect for a good lunch - and nothing makes your work day better than a great lunch waiting for you all morning, am I right?

Recipe:

caesar pasta salad
from Spicy Southern Kitchen
serves 4-6 as a main dish or 6 - 8 as a side

Ingredients:
1 cup mayonnaise or Greek yogurt
1/3 cup sour cream
1 large clove garlic, pressed
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 anchovies, finely minced (or substitute for an extra teaspoon Worcestershire sauce)
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 pound penne pasta, cooked until al dente and rinsed with cool water
6 large leaves Romaine lettuce, thinly sliced
1 1/2 cups grape tomatoes
4 green onions, green parts sliced
1/2 cup finely shredded parmesan cheese
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
2 grilled chicken breasts, diced (optional)
1 1/2 cups croutons

Instructions:

1) In a small bowl, stir together the mayonnaise through the Worcestershire sauce.

2) Toss half of the dressing with the pasta and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

3) Mix in the remaining ingredients, including the remaining dressing.  Serve.

Thai Chicken Salad with Orange Peanut Dressing

It's hot today.  So hot that I think I will lounge in air conditioning all day long, only leaving it to swim in the pool.  On days like these, the thought of cooking doesn't even appeal to me.  But alas, we still have to eat.  So salads will just have to suffice.  You know I am not a big salad person, so if I'm sharing one, it's got to be special.  Welcome to the blog, special salad!

Before you get distracted by the fact that the word "chicken" is in the recipe title, don't get too excited.  I don't love the name, because it's not a chicken salad.  It is a salad with chicken on it if you so desire - which I do not, but Kenzie, Nick and Mom marinated and grilled some chicken for theirs.  The salad itself is the winner here.  Romaine lettuce makes up the bulk of it, but there are also carrots, red peppers, edamame, cilantro, sesame seeds - even wonton strips if you can find them (which I couldn't, but those crunchy asian noodles worked as a great replacement and a good texture substitute).

Then there is the dressing, which is so fabulous I'd make it again to spice up a boring salad; it's called orange peanut dressing, which means peanut butter and orange juice and zest are definitely the stars.  Supporting actors include rice vinegar, soy sauce, grated ginger, garlic, and brown sugar.  There's actually no oil in here, so I hereby pronounce this salad dressing healthy.  And amazing.

Mix everything together, and you have the perfect salad for a hot summer dinner.  Or lunch.  Or both if you're lucky enough to have leftovers (add the dressing later if you want it to last overnight!)

Recipe:

Thai chicken salad with orange peanut dressing
from Cooking Classy
serves 4

Ingredients:
for dressing:
1/2 cup peanut butter
2 teaspoon orange zest
1/2 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
1 tablespoon low-sodium soy sauce
1 tablespoon peeled and grated ginger
1 tablespoon packed brown sugar
1 small clove garlic
salt to taste
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes, more or less to taste
for salad:
1 large head romaine lettuce, chopped
3 carrots, peeled and chopped
1 large red bell pepper, seeded and chopped
1 cup frozen shelled edamame, thawed
2/3 cup salted cashews, roughly chopped
1 cup wonton strips (or crispy asian noodles)
1/4 cup cilantro leaves
1 pound grilled chicken breasts, sliced
white and black sesame seeds for garnish

Instructions:

1) Make the dressing first.  Add all ingredients to a blender, except the red pepper flakes.  Pulse until the ginger and garlic are finely minced.  Season with salt to taste and add red pepper flakes.  Pulse just to stir in.  Pour into an airtight container and chill until ready to serve.

2) Prepare the salad.  Add all salad ingredients to a large salad bowl.  Pour dressing over and toss to evenly coat.  Serve immediately.

Cold Peanut Noodles

Yesterday at work we had the magazine drive.  Unless you're a teacher, you cannot even imagine what this is like.  Here's a hint: Picture 500 kids screaming at the tops of their little lungs in the gym because there's a magazine drive woman standing in front of them with a 15-foot long plush snake, a giant teddy bear, and blow-up shoes.  She's wearing a light-up lanyard and those damn weepulls (AKA puffballs with eyes that for some reason the kids are dying to own).  She is bribing them to sell magazines and the ultimate prize is a limousine lunch at McDonald's.  Are you starting to get an idea of how loud the magazine drive is?  Now, add in the game that the magazine drive lady plays at the end of the assembly, where 67% of the kids try to cheat, and the fact that the first prizes get delivered the very next morning if they disclose 8 addresses of loved ones that we can send catalogs to.  Yeah, you're getting a good idea of it now.  And of course, it wouldn't be complete if one of my kids didn't scream cry by the end of it.

Fast forward to today, when my kids passed in their magazine drive envelopes before they passed in their homework.  Then picture my horror when, while the kids were at specials, the magazine drive coordinators dropped off the giant teddy bear in my classroom.  In fact, he was propped up in my seat at my desks when I returned from a meeting.   We won the honor of his presence for the day for having the most magazine drive postcards filled out.  Oh joy.  My aide, Barbara, and I immediately shoved him on top of the cabinets (with a yard stick) to try to hide him from our attention-lacking students (it worked... no one pointed him out till the last class).  I just love this picture.

Anyway, the point of all the magazine drive whining is that, at this point in time, I have a love-hate relationship with magazines.  This week, I hate them all because of the magazine drive toys which I know I will be confiscating in the very near future.  But then again, I kind of miss reading my mom's magazines, which I often did when I still lived at home.  I love to flip through cooking magazines and take pictures on my phone of the recipes I want to try.  I don't get any subscriptions myself, except for my beloved Food Network Magazine, which Nick got me one year for Christmas and unbeknownst to him, it automatically renews every year and charges his credit card (shhhhh!)  

One cool aspect of the magazine is there's always a miniature magazine each month featuring 50 recipes.  Sometimes it's 50 flavored popcorns, or 50 quick breads, or 50 pasta dishes.  This summer, it was 50 picnic salads.  I actually made a couple of them; I made a caponata pasta salad, but was disappointed in it due to my inability to find fresh fennel for it.  Then I made this cold peanut noodle salad, and it was pretty awesome.  I had my mom over for dinner and the two of us loved it.  Then Mark and I happily ate it for lunch at work during the week.

The peanut sauce was the best part of this dish; it's smooth and flavorful (besides peanut butter, there's soy sauce and rice vinegar and sesame oil and fresh ginger! Mmmmm).  It's also a little spicy (the recipe calls for 3 tablespoons of Sriracha.  No thanks, I'd like to keep my tastebuds; I used maybe 1/4 teaspoon!).  Basically if you need a good go-to peanut sauce, make this one.  Then add to it the red pepper, cucumber, and cilantro?  Yes please.  Not to mention the noodles.  Except here is my confession: the recipe calls for Chinese egg noodles.  I confess to having no idea what Chinese egg noodles are.  I used the ones you'd serve with beef stroganoff, and I am highly certain that those aren't Chinese.  I scoured the Asian section trying to find a clue and finally gave up.  Anyone want to steer me in the right direction?

So.  Magazines.  This week (and until the drive ends October 29) I will hate them.  But I have to thank them for this tasty, quick and easy recipe.

Recipe:

cold peanut noodles

from the July 2014 Food Network Magazine

Ingredients:

1 pound Chinese egg noodles

1/2 cup peanut butter

3 tablespoons soy sauce

3 tablespoons Sriracha (or less!)

3 tablespoons rice vinegar

1 tablespoon sesame oil

1 tablespoon grated peeled ginger

1 red bell pepper, chopped

1 cucumber, chopped

1/2 cup cilantro, chopped

salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:

1) Cook pasta; drain and rinse.

2) Whisk peanut butter, soy sauce, Sriracha, rice vinegar, sesame oil, and ginger.  Toss with noodles.

3) Mix in bell pepper, cucumber and cilantro.  Season with salt and pepper.

Southwestern Farro Salad

I go through blogger phases.  When I discover someone that I like and trust, I binge on their recipes for a while.  You know it's true.  How many times have I talked about A Couple Cooks, Annie's Eats or The Pioneer Woman?  Well, get ready for a mini binge on Elly Says Opa.

 Elly is a great blogger and cook with a Greek heritage, so lots of her recipes are Greek (like that weirdly delicious semolina  cake), but there are also plenty of other things thrown in there, as you are about to see.  I've made a few of her recipes throughout the past few years, but lately she's just been reading my mind and posting recipes that are perfect for me.

For example, she must have realized that, since my lovely broccoli and cheese farro casserole, I've been dying to try farro again, so she came up with this southwestern farro salad.  She even talked about how it was a great thing to bring to work, and it happened to be right when school started up again and needed to start thinking about work lunches.  She also says it's full of protein from the farro and beans, without adding any meat; you know I love that.  Plus, and most importantly - this salad is delicious.

First of all, any time a recipe calls for pepitas, I get exited; those little crunchy gems are among my favorite seeds!  Plus, they get toasted for a little while so they're extra crunchy (just don't add them into your salad too early if you're trying to make it ahead of time; they do lose their crunchiness!) Then there is corn, black beans, and tomatoes - you've got yourself a little southwestern vegetable flair going there.  The dressing is a mix of apple cider vinegar, light sour cream, and the juice of a lime.  The sour cream makes the dressing creamy (but still healthy!) and the lime juice is just tart enough to make all the other flavors pop.  Add some cilantro and monterrey jack cheese (oh yeah!) into the farro-y mix, and voila: a wonderful salad that is healthy but filling, good as a side or as a main dish.  Mark and I were a little bit obsessed with this salad.  We may or may not have eaten it for days at work, scraping the leftover container clean quicker than we expected.  If you're not sure about farro, this is the recipe to win you over.

Recipe:

southwestern farro salad
from Elly Says Opa

Ingredients:
1 cup dry farro
1 teaspoon canola oil
2 tablespoons pepitas
1 15-ounce can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 cup corn
1 medium tomato, cored, seeded and diced, or 1 cup grape or cherry tomatoes, halved
2 ounces monterrey jack, pepper jack, or cheddar cheese
handful of chopped cilantro
for dressing:
1 small jalapeño, finely minced (I skipped this)
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
1 lime, juiced
2 teaspoons light sour cream
1 tablespoons canola or olive oil

Instructions:

1) Bring a large pot of water to a boil, and add the farro.  Cook for 15 - 20 minutes (it should still have some chew to it).  Drain the farro, return it to the empty pot, and cover with a lid.  Allow to steam for 10 minutes.  Then place in a large bowl so it can start to cool.

2) Meanwhile, heat the canola oil in a small skillet over medium heat.  Add the pepitas and cook 1 - 2 minutes or until golden.  Be careful - if your oil is too hot, they have a tendency to pop right out of the pan.  Set aside.

3)  To make the dressing, whisk together the jalapeño, vinegar, lime juice, and sour cream.  Then slowly add the oil, while continuing to whisk.  Season to taste with salt and pepper.

4) To the bowl with the farro, add the pepitas, black beans, corn, tomatoes, cheese, cilantro, and a little salt and pepper.  Pour the dressing over the farro mixture ,stirring lightly to combine all the ingredients and distribute the dressing evenly.  Refrigerate until ready to serve.

Zoodles Greek Salad

Okay, folks.  This is very exciting.  I have tried and fallen in love with zoodles.  Yes, zoodles.  In case you haven't been following the latest vegetable craze, zoodles are zucchini "noodles" made with something called a spiralizer.  You know me: it can't be surprising to hear that I registered for a spiralizer because I was dying to turn zucchini into noodles.  It's also not surprising that no one got it for me!  So don't worry: I returned 4 of my 5 coffee makers and got plenty of great stuff in return.  One thing I had to get: my $20 vegetable spiralizer.  It sort of looks like a male torture device, or two funnels put together with sharp blades inside.  If you put the zucchini in one end and twist, it makes spaghetti-like strips.  The other end makes fettucini-like strips.  I've only experienced with zucchini, but apparently lots of other vegetables can be spiralized too (I can see carrots being awesome!).  Once you get the zoodles, you can briefly cook them and eat them in place of pasta, or you can eat them raw, like we did in this salad.

I love Greek salad anyway - the feta, the lemon, the fresh oregano, the tomatoes, not to mention those beloved little kalamata olives.  But then serve it over zoodles, and you've really gotten me excited.  There's nothing not to like.  You feel like you're eating a cold pasta dish with Mediterranean flavors!  The zoodles really do make you think you are eating a slightly crunchy pasta, and the salad dressing is so bright and delicious .   And can we talk about how easy this is to make?  3 steps.  Maybe 10 minutes.  That's it.

I was pretty pumped when I tried this, and couldn't wait to make it for Maggie because she is gluten-free.  She loved it so much that a week or so later, she brought me zucchinis and lemons and begged me to make it for her again!  So my (many) gluten-free friends out there: try out some zoodles!  Or just come over and I'll try them out for you.  I definitely want to try a hot dish with zoodles; my mom says she saw people cook them on the Today show and no one could tell that it wasn't actually pasta.  Have you tried zoodles?  What's your favorite way to eat them?

Recipe:

zoodles Greek salad
from Cupcakes and Kale Chips
serves 4 - 6

Ingredients:
juice of 1 lemon (about 1/4 cup)
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon fresh oregano, finely chopped
kosher salt and pepper
2 medium zucchini, peeled if desired
1 cup grape of cherry tomatoes, halved
1/2 cup pitted kalamata olives, halved
2 ounces crumbled feta cheese

Instructions:

1) In a small bowl, whisk together the lemon juice, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, oregano, and salt and pepper to taste.  Set aside.

2) Using a vegetable spiral cutter, cut the zucchini into zucchini noodles.

3) In a large bowl, gently toss together the zucchini noodles, tomatoes, olives, feta, and dressing until combined and evenly coated.

Strawberry, Mango and Avocado Salad

This was a surprisingly delicious salad that I made on my wedding invitation party night! I invited Anne and Caitlin over to help my sisters, Mom and I write out the hundreds of addresses and return addresses - not to mention all the stamping and envelope-licking.  They were HUGE helps and we got the job done in a short and minimally painful 3 hours.  They needed their energy before all that work, so I made dinner.  I decided to make beans and rice for dinner (just in case Dani came, I wanted to stay gluten free!) and I tried this salad out with it.

Even I had to admit that this salad sounds weird.  Avocado with strawberries?  And mango with balsamic vinegar?  And honey with cayenne pepper?  The answer to all these questions is yes.  Yes, put smooth, creamy avocado with bright, sweet strawberries.  Temper the super sweetness of mango with tangy balsamic vinegar.  Spice up honey with cayenne pepper.  And throw it all together with cilantro, lime and orange juices, and salt, and you have just the most bizarrely wonderful salad.

I think I was not alone in being shocked how great this salad was.  Even I, who love weird foods, had my doubts, but I thought it was great.  Sweet, cold, bright, and clean-tasting, it was a great addition to a beans-and-rice meal.  More shocking, though, was that everyone else loved it too.  Even my mom, and she hates weird food.  We all devoured it, even eating it on top of the rice and beans.  It's a perfect summery salad.  I know: it sounds really weird, but just go with it.

Recipe:

strawberry, mango and avocado salad
from Pink Parsley

Ingredients:
1 mango, peeled, pitted and cut into 1-inch cubes
1 cup chopped strawberries
1 tablespoon honey
1/2 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons orange juice
juice of 1/2 lime
pinch cayenne
1 tablespoon minced fresh cilantro
1 avocado, pitted and cut into 1-inch cubes
kosher salt

Instructions:

1) In a medium bowl, whisk together the honey, vinegar, orange juice, lime juice, cayenne, salt, and cilantro.  Toss with strawberries and mango, and allow to sit for at least 15 minutes.

2) When ready to serve, gently mix in the avocado.  Season with salt to taste and serve immediately.

Asian Quinoa Salad

I have a love for all things quinoa, all things Asian, and all things edamame.  Therefore, what is not to love in an Asian quinoa salad with edamame!?  The answer to that is nothing.

Honestly besides the fact that this tastes great, the way it looks is one of my favorite things about it.  It is so colorful and bright, with the green edamame, red pepper, purple cabbage... it's like a rainbow in a bed of brown quinoa.  Dorky comparison, but seriously have you ever seen a prettier salad?

And then there is the flavor.  The dressing is a mixture of soy sauce, sesame oil, red wine vinegar, scallion, cilantro, sesame seeds, and ginger.  Doesn't it just sound delicious?  It's literally bursting with flavor without even considering the vegetables in there.  This salad was a huge hit with some unexpected people.  Mark, for example, ate almost the whole thing in two day's time.  And my most surprise customer was Amelia, who is, after all, a two-year old.  I can only hope someday my toddler asks for "more queenwah."  If you can get a little kid to eat quinoa, you know the salad must be delicious!

Recipe:

Asian quinoa salad
from Two Peas and Their Pod
serves 4

Ingredients:
1 cup quinoa
2 cups water
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup chopped red cabbage
1 cup shelled and cooked edamame (I used frozen)
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1/2 cup shredded carrots
1 cup diced cucumber

for the dressing:
1/4 cup light soy sauce or tamari sauce
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
2 tablespoons chopped green onion
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
1 tablespoon sesame seeds
1/4 teaspoon grated ginger
1/8 teaspoon red pepper flakes
salt and black pepper, to taste

Directions:

1) Add water, quinoa and salt to a medium saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat.  Boil for 5 minutes.  Turn the heat to low and simmer for about 15 minutes, or until water is absorbed.  Remove from heat and fluff with a fork.

2) Place the quinoa in a large bowl and add the cabbage, edamame, red pepper, carrots and cucumber.  Set aside.

3) In a small bowl, whisk together the soy sauce, sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, green onions, cilantro, sesame seeds, ginger, red pepper flakes, salt and pepper.

4) Pour the dressing over the quinoa salad and stir to combine.