pasta salad

Pasta salad, my new standby. Makes great lunches and dinners, as well as an excellent side dish. I can eat it straight while it's still warm from cooking the pasta, or really relish it when it's cold. While I don't stick to a recipe anymore, I'll share with y'all the one that gave me the idea/outline, from Mollie Katzen's Get Cooking.

best pasta salad
salt for the pasta water
3/4 pound fusilli, small penne, or orecchiette pasta
5 T olive oil
3/4 t minced garlic, about 1 medium clove
3/4 c very finely minced red onion
1/3 c grated Parmesan cheese
3 T red wine vinegar
3/4 t salt
1/8 t freshly ground black pepper
1 medium bell pepper, any color, diced
half a medium cucumber, peeled, seeded, and diced

1. Put a large pot of cold water to boil over high heat, and add a tablespoon of salt. Have your colander ready. Once the water boils, add the pasta and keep the heat high. Cook for the time recommended on the package, tasting to make sure it's not overcooked. When it is just tender enough to bite into comfortable but not ye mushy, dump the water plus pasta into the colander and shake to drain.
2. While the pasta is cooking, combine the olive oil, garlic, onion, Parmesan, vinegar, salt, and black pepper in a large bowl and whisk to blend. Add the pasta to this bowl after it's drained, stirring to coat all the pasta. Set aside to cool to room temperature.
3. Add the bell pepper and cucumber, and mix gently but thoroughly. Serve at room temperature, or chill and serve cold.

Okay, so I tried it this way. and it works. but that leaves me room to manipulate.

I take whatever pasta I have, but usually corkscrew or bowtie, and cook it. I then drain it, coat it with enough cheese so it looks like every piece has got some stuck to it (which is why you do it while everything is still hot, the cheese sticks to the pasta), and then dress it with some Italian dressing or marinade. I used ranch one time even, and it worked just fine (though I did wait until it was cool to add the ranch dressing just before eating). And add whatever vegetables you want--I usually use carrots and broccoli because those are standards in my refrigerator, but bell peppers and cucumbers would be delightful. I've added corn to add a little more substance, which turned out just fine. I've thought about chickpeas, but haven't. I've also used the grated Parmesan my mom has for spaghetti because it was the only cheese she had in the refrigerator, which meant I used a heck of a lot more cheese, but it still worked fine.

So tinker with it and make it yours, but you'll have to share it with me. This is going to be a lunchtime staple for me now that I'm starting to take my lunch to work regularly.

interesting article!

i was checking out the news today on CNN and I saw this article about meat allergies! it's not the meat allergy that I have (i'm really allergic to the mold that the animals eat which apparently persist into their meat), but it's kinda interesting! watch out for tick bites!

http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/20/health/meat-tick-bite-allergy/index.html?hpt=hp_c2

embarrassment and thus comfort food

so you know how much students love free food? and if you say "lunch provided" it's guaranteed an audience? do you know how much I dread seeing "lunch provided"?? I just got an email for something next week where lunch is provided, so I have to proceed to send an email saying just exactly what kind of lunch are you providing, i have food allergies... And I inevitably get one back that says something along the lines of we haven't ordered anything yet so let us know what you're allergic to. Thus my dread...it's terrible to list out everything, mostly because it's usually sandwiches and pizza, both of which I can't eat for the dreaded yeast. It works out okay with pasta salad and usually regular salads, but it's so frustrating/embarrassing/annoying to have to email these people I don't usually know well and weight them down with something they don't need to deal with.

sigh.

i'm baking today. happily, a favorite dessert recipe with no eggs. and a crowd favorite. comfort food + gift for a friend combined in the absolute best way. (also, these freeze really well so make a pan and freeze them in ziplocs to take out later!)

Chocolate Raspberry Crumb Bars

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened

2 cups all purpose flour

½ cup packed light brown sugar

¼ teaspoon salt

2 cups (12 oz package) Semi-Sweet Chocolate chips, divided

1 ¼ (14 oz can) Sweetened condensed milk

½ cup chopped nuts (optional)

1/3 cup seedless raspberry jam

Preheat oven to 350° F. Beat butter in large mixer bowl until creamy. Beat in flour, sugar, and salt until well mixed. With floured fingers, press 1 ¾ cups crumb mixture onto bottom of greased 13x9 inch baking pan; reserve remaining mixture. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes until edges are golden brown.

Combine 1 cup morsels and sweetened condensed milk in small, heavy duty saucepan. Melt over low heat, stirring until mooth. Spread over hot crust.

Stir nuts into reserved crumb mixture, sprinkle over chocolate filling. Drop teaspoonfuls of raspberry jam over crumb mixture. Sprinkle with remaining morsels. Continue baking for 25 to 30 minutes or until center is set. Cool completely on wire rack.

traveling

i'm baaaaaaaaaack! really, i am. I'm sorry to the faithful who might have expected recipes and my philosophical ponderings over the last few weeks, but i had a lot going on with school and then i decided to travel across the country and then move. a lot going on, which precluded blogging about the wonderful world of food allergies. but i did give me plenty of fodder for topics, so maybe i'll make it all up to you.

first off, i love traveling! i haven't done a lot of it in awhile, but this time i did the whole cross-country flight, hotel room, touristy things included. I knew from the get-go that the food would be a challenging issue for me. Let's consider it, what do most people do when confront with these kinds of things? Run into a fast food restaurant and pick something up. I can only survive so long on McDonald's fries (coated with beef flavoring, which is probably why they taste so nice, but apparently wasn't enough to bother me) and milkshakes.

It actually got me thinking about how hard it is to even travel and health fairly healthfully. Yes, there's a McDonald's on every corner that can cover you in an emergency, but their salads aren't particularly healthy. We went in a Panera one morning, but while I had ruled out their lunch menu, I had hoped for a pastry or muffin that I could eat (everything has eggs in it, but I managed okay). If you look at Panera's nutritional information, their Caesar salad packs about 500 calories, which is fine for a meal, but a salad that's 500 calories?!

Luckily, the wedding I went to had a delightful, vegetarian buffet dinner. While the only thing I technically could have eaten was the green beans, I was able to enjoy salad, pasta, and the green beans with no ill effects. That raises another interesting question--one I've seen in the news recently--both the bride and the groom are vegetarians, so it was not unexpected to have a vegetarian dinner, and as a fellow vegetarian, I was pleased. But what if they'd been vegan? Should we all eat vegan?

Back to the traveling though. I changed terminals in the Chicago airport and I had a really long layover, so I was anticipating being able to find some good food to stand me over until I could get home and my mom could feed me something guaranteed to have no allergens in it. Nada. Deep dish pizza may be a Chicago standard and it is indeed delicious, but I knew I wouldn't be able to eat it and not suffer the consequences, not something I'd want to have to deal with on an airplane/while flying through turbulence anyway. Same goes with the fast food restaurants and some of the more diner-like restaurants scattered through the airport (though I did enjoy seeing the wine bar complete with player piano!). I ended up in a Hudson's paying exorbitant (though expected) prices for a bag of frito's and reese's peanut butter cups. Sounds delightfully healthy, right?

So imagine a week spent chowing down on that and playing the tourist. I can't imagine how I really made it through some days...stocking up on chocolate frosted banana cupcakes that apparently didn't have eggs in them must have gotten me through. Plus lots and lots of Sprite for the sugar.

Anyone else travel with a special diet and have stories? Or just tried to eat healthy and managed it? I knew when I had gone on vacation in the past, my usual careful consideration of what I'm eating goes out the window but it was interesting this year when I really really couldn't.