Quickie: Holy Macaroni!

Pasta salad is one of the easiest dishes to make a large batch of, and always a crowd-pleaser.

I stock up on pasta and Italian dressing when they go on sale, and am always ready to whip up a batch for church luncheons and other potluck events.

I like to use Wacky Mac, a multicolor mix of pasta shapes (shells, wheels, and spirals) which adds visual excitement with no extra effort on my part. Wacky Mac is colored with beets, tomatoes, and spinach, not artificial ingredients. Wacky Mac also goes on sale at Big Y frequently, and there are often coupons for it too, so I stock up on it.

Here's what was in my last pasta salad-- The colossal batch I brought to the 9/21 church supper.

1 1/2 pounds pasta (2 bags of Wacky Mac)

16 to 24 ounces Italian dressing (I used 24 oz. of Cain's Light Italian.)

1 1/2 pints grape tomatoes, snipped in half with kitchen shears

2 cans black pitted olives

8 oz. bag of pizza blend cheese (or Italian blend or mozzarella)

Toss everything together.

Of course, adjust the batch size and ingredient proportions to your liking. The cheese added some protein so that the leftovers would be more like a complete meal. Unfortunately, the supper was very sparsely attended, and I packed up three quart-sized yogurt tubs to foist upon others. But it was sooooooo good.

Quickie: Double Pepper Cheeseburger

Double Pepper Cheeseburger:

Mix adobo seasoning into the raw meat. Prepare patties as you normally would.

Top with slices of sweet red pepper and pepper jack cheese. (We had raw peppers, but roasted red peppers from a jar are good too.)

We had our burgers on hearty multigrain bread, and put them in the microwave for about 30 seconds to melt the cheese.

P.S. Speaking of good hearty bread, I just got my (FedEx-ed) bread from Nature's Pride through FoodBuzz. It is delicious. It's a bread to get for what's not in it, namely trans fats, high-fructose corn syrup, and artificial colors, flavors, and preservatives. Just the good stuff. :)

Shrimp with Carrot Ribbons and Coconut

I am finally organizing the 3 years worth of recipes that I had accumulated in a large laundry basket.

I have photo albums with the sticky-pages for the small cards and clippings, and binders with plastic sheet protectors for full pages.

Having run out of supplies, I made a Wal-Mart run.

It was Chris' evening at his grandmother's, so I was going to be alone and could make whatever I wanted for dinner, without having to work around his fussiness. So I got a 14-ounce bag of frozen cooked shrimp for $5, went home, and invented this recipe.

I got the cooked shrimp because it requires less effort than raw.

I cut the carrots into ribbons with the peeler because they cook quickly and it's less time-consuming than dicing.

Also, it looks pretty, and carrot ribbons are also nice tossed with fettuccine or linguine.

Shrimp with Carrot Ribbons and Coconut

½ lb. frozen cooked shrimp

2 TBSP olive oil

3 scallions, diced

¼ cup fresh parsley or cilantro, diced

2 medium carrots

juice of 1 lime

about 1 tsp Goya Adobo with cumin

about ½ tsp black pepper

(I sprinkled the seasonings directly from the containers over the food.)

½ cup unsweetened shredded coconut

Run shrimp under cool water and let sit in colander to drain and partially thaw while doing the following steps.

Peel the carrots. Using the peeler and the same peeling motion, cut the carrots into ribbons.

Heat olive oil in large skillet over medium heat. Sauté scallions and parsley until the scallions are translucent, stirring frequently.

Add shrimp to the pan. Add the carrot ribbons. Both will take the same amount of time to cook. Thoroughly squeeze the lime over the pan, stir. Let cook about 3 minutes. Add the coconut, adobo, and pepper, toss to thoroughly mix. Cook for about 5 more minutes, or until the shrimp is heated through.

Serve over brown rice.

Serves 2

(But I ate both portions. Delicious.)

Happy Rosh Hashanah!

Rosh Hashanah started at sundown tonight. I'm not Jewish, but I felt like celebrating a holiday with festive food.

I used the occasion as a reason/excuse to make (Martha Stewart's version of) the traditional honey cake, which I found amongst my recipe clippings.

Honey Cake with Caramelized Pears

If you keep kosher and would like to make dairy-free versions of these recipes, substitute margarine for the butter and soy milk for the regular milk. The cake can be made (without the pears) one day ahead, and stored in plastic wrap at room temperature.

Ingredients

Makes one 10-inch cake

Unsalted butter, softened, for pan

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon coarse salt

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

2 large eggs

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/4 cup packed light-brown sugar

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons best-quality honey

1/2 cup milk

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1/2 teaspoon freshly grated lemon zest

Caramelized Pears (below)

Freshly whipped cream, or nondairy whipped topping, for serving (optional)

Directions

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Butter a 10-inch springform pan. Dust with flour; tap out excess. Whisk together the flour, baking powder and soda, salt, and cinnamon in a bowl; set aside. Mix eggs and sugars on high speed in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment until pale and thick, about 3 minutes.

Whisk together honey, milk, oil, and zest. With mixer on low, add honey mixture to egg mixture; mix until combined, about 1 minute. Add half the flour mixture; mix until smooth. Mix in remaining flour mixture. Pour batter into pan.

Bake until dark golden brown and a cake tester inserted in center comes out clean, about 50 minutes. Let cool in pan on a wire rack 15 minutes. Run a thin knife around edge of cake; carefully remove sides of pan. Transfer cake to a platter. Top with pears. Serve with whipped cream or topping, if desired.

Caramelized Pears

Makes about 2 cups

Ingredients

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

1/4 cup sugar

1 3/4 pounds red Anjou pears, cut into 1/2-inch-thick wedges (or 1/4-inch-thick wedges if pears are firm)

1/4 cup best-quality honey

Directions

Heat butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add sugar; cook, stirring, until almost dissolved, 1 to 2 minutes. Add pears; cook, stirring occasionally, until soft and just golden, 12 to 20 minutes. Pour in honey; cook, stirring, until pears are coated and very soft, 3 to 5 minutes.

I used apples instead of pears because that's what I had on hand. It took 5 apples to make the 1 3/4 pounds, and I skipped the sugar.

Everything You Need To Know About Food Safety But Didn't Know Where To Look (or even that you needed to know)

I am so psyched about this! Yes, I'm a nerd, but this is just great!

Yesterday, the federal goverment launched FoodSafety.gov, a website that has everything you will probably ever need to know and more about food safety, in article and chart formats, with information from the USDA, FDA, CDC, NIH, and other federal agencies. Recalls are posted in a live feed in the upper left corner of the pages. (Today's recalls include cookies that were labeled as molasses cookies but are really peanut butter cookies. So, peanut allergy sufferers, avoid Stop & Shop Home Town Bakery molasses cookies for a while.) This is government at its most effective. We need more of this quality of work from the feds.

Charts to check out first:

What temperature do you need to cook that meat to be safe?

How long can I keep stuff in the fridge or freezer?

How long can those eggs/egg dishes/egg products stay in the fridge/freezer?

There are also Q&As, like this one about how to spot a safe seafood seller.

Full disclosure: I worked in the seafood department of the Spencer, MA Price Chopper supermarket in the summer of 2000. Going by this advice, I would not buy from myself and that department as it was at that time.

There is also a wide variety of multimedia materials, which would be a good resource for teachers and groups.

Good job, feds! Now do everything else this well!

Maybe I'll call it "Green Monster Pie"

Tonight I made an extemporaneous variation of spankopita. I prefer to buy groceries based on what is on sale or in season or a good deal, and seldom buy anything with a specific plan, but to have on hand to work with as the spirit moves me. For this dish, the only ingredients I bought specifically for it were the spinach and the feta. I had everything else I needed. Actually, I didn't really, but I had ingredients that were "close enough". This "Green Monster Pie" was nowhere near authentic Greek cuisine, but it was delicious and addictive. I had to pack our lunch portions before we ate so we wouldn't eat the whole batch tonight.

I used the recipe below, diverging from it in several places.

*First of all, I used Trader Joe's Multigrain Baking & Pancake Mix instead of Bisquick. It's heartier and more wholesome than processed white flour baking mixes.

*Secondly, because at Price Rite frozen spinach only comes in 16 ounce bags, and I didn't want to open another bag of spinach to get the 20 ounces the recipe calls for, I decided to make up the 4 ounce difference with zucchini, of which I had a bounty. I used 2 small zucchini, which was much more than 4 ounces--I'm guessing now that each one of them could have been 4 ounces. But the extra veggie matter was good.

*Thirdly, I was all out of scallions, and didn't want to buy any when I had a decent substitute on hand. So I used an entire sweet onion I had in the fridge. I used the coarse side of a box grater to shred both the onion and the zucchini, and squeezed the excess liquid out of the shredded onion using a paper towel.

*My feta came in an 8 ounce block, so I put that in and increased the quantity of the other cheese to make up for the difference. I used a whole 8 ounce/2 cup bag of shredded cheese, a pizza blend that included mozzarella, provolone, parmesan, and romano. This also made the recipe more to Chris' liking (he's not a big feta fan, and prefers it in small doses).

*Otherwise, I followed the recipe step-by-step.

SPANAKOPITA WITH BISQUICK

6 eggs, divided

1 1/4 cups milk

2 cups Bisquick mix

1 Tablespoon oil

2 10-oz. packages frozen spinach, thawed

2 bunches of scallions, chopped

3/4 cup feta cheese, crumbled

1 cup grated cheese (we used mozzarella)

Squeeze dry the thawed spinach. Mix together 2 eggs, milk, Bisquick, and oil to make a batter. Pour half the batter into a 9"x13" pan. Make sure batter is close to edge of pan. Saute spinach and scallions in a little oil. Add 4 well-beaten eggs, feta, and grated cheese. Carefully spoon spinach mixture over batter in pan. Top with remaining batter. Bake at 350F for 15 minutes, reduce heat to 325F and bake for an additional 30 minutes.

I think you could also increase the zucchini so it would be 10 ounces of zucchini or so and a 10 ounce block of frozen spinach, so this would be great way to use up the ubiquitous zucchini that you may have an absurd amount of and may be running out of ideas for.