Greek Orzo Pasta Salad

For Suzie's bridal shower, I made this Greek orzo pasta salad, a recipe I found through my beloved FoodGawker. The recipe can be found at My Baking Addiction. It was a really delicious, light pasta salad, a perfect lunch and summer salad.

Greek Orzo Pasta Salad (adapted from My Baking Addiction)]
For the Pasta Salad
one box of orzo
cucumber, diced
four Roma tomatoes, diced
one diced red onion
one diced red bell pepper
one diced green bell pepper
one package of crumbled reduced fat feta

For the dressing (these measurements are all to start, I actually ended up adding a little more dressing because it looked a little dry)
1/2 cup of olive oil
1/2 cup of red wine vinegar
1 heaping tsp of Dijon mustard
2 cloves fresh garlic, minced
3/4 tsp dried oregano
3/4 tsp dried basil
salt and pepper

Boil orzo according to package directions. Combine vegetables, feta and orzo. In a small mixing bowl, combine ingredients for dressing and mix well. Pour over pasta salad mixture and chill for at least an hour.

Bridal Shower Menu

I hosted a bridal shower today for my friend Suzie who is getting married next month. As with most parties, it was delightful to me to have the opportunity to plan a menu. I decided to choose something simple, that would look nice but be easy to prepare. I chose to create an antipasti platter, roasted garlic hummus, Greek orzo pasta salad, and a fruit platter. There were M&M and chocolate chip blondies with ice cream for dessert. I was going to make the hummus myself but got too lazy. Oh well. I did make the pasta salad and the blondies.


The antipasti platter consisted of Genoa salami, hard salami, Wisconsin provolone, white cheddar, pepperoni, antipasti olives, roasted red peppers and marinated artichokes.

Look for coming entries with recipes for the pasta salad and the blondies.

Tuesday Night Dinner Enchiladas

My sister requested enchiladas for dinner this week, so I made a pan of black bean and cheese enchiladas and a pan of my chicken and sour cream enchiladas. The black bean and cheese just used regular shredded Mexican cheese, two cans of black bans, and almost a whole large can of enchilada sauce. The sour cream and chicken enchiladas follows my original recipe, but I've modified it a little by seasoning boiled and shredded chicken breasts with cumin, cayenne, paprika, salt and pepper. I also added some sliced white mushrooms this time, which Scott said added a nice earthiness to the flavor. I served the enchiladas with a basic tossed salad and corn.

Spinach with Crispy Garlic Chips

I was looking for a side dish recently for dinner and stumbled across this recipe on The Pioneer Woman. My sister and I both like spinach well enough, and we love garlic so it seemed like a quick, simple option. Spinach isn't really my favorite lettuce, but it's so good for you.

Ingredients
one bag of spinach per two people
four or five cloves of sliced garlic
olive oil
salt
pepper

Slice your garlic cloves thinly. Throw the sliced garlic into a skillet with a few tablespoons of olive oil, then turn the stove on. PW teaches that if you let the oil and the garlic heat up together, your garlic is less likely to burn. Stir lightly and let the garlic brown. After garlic browns, remove it from the pan and let it rest on a paper towel-lined plate. With your stove on medium-low, add the spinach and let it wilt in the oil and heat. Stir gently and season with salt and pepper. Remove to plate and top with garlic chips.

Tuesday Night Dinner: Baked Pasta

For the Tuesday night dinner before I went to Denver, I made a baked penne in a mushroom and Italian sausage marinara and topped with shredded cheese. There was also salad and garlic bread, as always. The marinara was amazing, and Scott put this dinner in his Top 10 favorite dinners. I took the time to make the marinara the night before, letting it simmer for an hour and a half and then sit in the fridge all day Tuesday. This is probably what made the sauce that much better, giving the flavors the time to truly meld together. I don't really remember what I did exactly and I never measure my marinara anymore. Crushed tomatoes, tomato sauce, Italian seasoning, plenty of minced garlic, salt, pepper, a few pinches of white sugar, maybe a hint of crushed red pepper flakes. I do love a good red sauce.

Carrie: ICBC Eggs

I chose eggs as my Iron Chef Blogger Challenge ingredient a few weeks ago with dreams of making fancy baked eggs in individual-sized dishes. Search baked eggs on FoodGawker and you'll know what I'm talking about. Then I started realizing that I'm a little lazy most days when I get home from work, and I saw this recipe for Egg Salad on Simply Recipes, and I'm pretty fond of egg salad, so that's what I made for ICBC Eggs instead. One day I'll get to those baked eggs.

Carrie's Egg Salad (adapted from Simply Recipes)
three hard-boiled eggs
curry powder, to taste
diced celery, to taste
light mayo, to taste

Hard boil the eggs, dice them, and combine with celery, mayo and curry powder to taste.

Tip: Once, ages ago, I found the trick to perfect hard-boiled eggs on another food blog. If I could find it for you, I would. But you take room temperature eggs, cover them with water in a pot, bring to boiling, turn off the heat, cover the pot and eggs, and let sit for exactly 12 minutes. Take them out and place in cold water to cool down until you can peel them. Perfect, hard-boiled eggs.

Carrie: ICBC Spinach

Once upon a time, I tried to make spinach and feta turnovers-basically, spanakopita. It worked alright that time, but I had a hell of a time trying not to tear my phyllo dough. I tried again for ICBC Spinach and ran into the same problem. My turnovers were also a little bland this time, probably due to my constant issue of underseasoning food. But if you're a fan of spanakopita and you want to make life harder on yourself, this is the way to do it.

Spinach and Feta Turnovers
(Recipe from Pinch My Salt)
1/2 onion, chopped
1 tablespoon of butter
2 small cloves of garlic, chopped
1 package frozen spinach, drained and squeezed dry
4 ounces crumbled feta
1 egg, slightly beaten
dash of fresh-grated nutmeg
freshly ground black pepper
pinch of salt
20 sheets phyllo dough
1/2 cup of butter, melted

In a small skillet, saute onion in butter over medium heat until soft. Add garlic, cook for 30 more seconds and remove from heat.
In a medium bowl, combine spinach, feta, egg, onion and garlic, nutmeg, pepper and salt. Stir until well combined.
Remove one sheet of phyllo from stack (cover the remaining sheets with a damp cloth to keep from drying out) and lay it on a work surface. Brush entire sheet with a thin layer of melted butter. Place another sheet on top, brush with butter and repeat two more times (you will have four sheets stacked with a layer of butter on the top sheet). Cut this stack in half lenghwise with a knife.
You now have two long rectangles of phyllo in front of you. Place about 2 Tablespoonfuls of filling on the bottom right side of one of the rectangles. Fold the bottom left corner up and over the filling so that the bottom edge is now even with the right side. Continue folding up and over until you end up with a triangle. Brush triangle with melted butter and place on a baking sheet.
Repeat this procedure with the other phyllo rectangle.
Repeat steps again using the rest of the dough.
Bake in preheated oven, 375 degrees, for about 20 minutes or until golden brown.
Yields: 10 turnovers (in theory)