Simple Delicious Pasta Salad

An easy weeknight side dish perfect for warm weather days, or picnics. This recipe is good for picky eaters too, as there are no tomatoes or olives present in the salad, and it's not too salty or vinegary.

1. Boil pasta according to the package instructions. It's best to use minimal additional salt as the dressing already contains the perfect amount. When the pasta has finished boiling, drain the remaining water and set it aside.
2. Meanwhile, whisk or stir together mayonnaise, mustard, sugar, vinegar, black pepper, cayenne, and garlic powder; taste before adding salt, then taste again. The dressing should taste just a little bit too salty, since it needs to provide flavor for an entire pound of pasta. Once the dressing is seasoned to your preferences, set it aside.
3. Use a food processor to mince the onion, pepper, and celery until fine. It's best to mince each vegetable individually to avoid over-encumbering the food processor. Place your minced vegetables in a large salad bowl.
4. Add the drained pasta to your salad bowl followed by dressing,  gently stir until everything is thoroughly combined. Taste for salt and pepper.
5. Serve and enjoy! Feeds a lot, and even better the next day.

Double Pork Fried Rice

This is perfect if you're craving some extra tasty and indulgent Asian takeout but don't want to spend 10 dollars a plate. This rice is called "double pork" fried rice because there is both tender sliced Chinese roast pork and bacon in the rice. It makes enough for 4 people and since the frying pan used in the pictures is too small for 3 cups cooked rice + pork and vegetables this fool proof method of stir frying for serving 2+ people at once has been developed. Cooking the components of the dish separately, and then combining as it is done is a way to make sure each part of the rice cooks perfectly, and maintains it's distinct flavor. Sound good? Here's how to make it:

Ingredients

4 slices bacon, chopped into bite sized pieces

1 celery stalk chopped

1/2 onion chopped

1 cup broccoli florets

1 lb Chinese roasted pork sliced very thin

3 cups cooked rice, cold. day old is best.

3 tbsp soy sauce

You definitely want all your ingredients ready and prepped before you start cooking for this meal. 

Fry bacon in the olive oil until just cooked.

Add in broccoli, fry 2 minutes (less if using frozen) and then add in onion and celery. Stir fry for 2 minutes and then make a well in the center of the pan. Add a teaspoon of vegetable oil if necessary and place ginger and garlic in the oil. Fry until you can smell the lovely aroma of garlic and ginger, about a minute. Remove garlic and ginger from pan. Stir fry everything for another 20 seconds, then remove from pan.

Add a tablespoon of oil to pan and then add in soy sauce, then rice. Stir fry breaking up rice as it cooks until it is a slightly darker color, for as long as 5 minutes. Rice should not begin burning. Dump into a bowl with the already cooked vegetables and stir.

Drop chopped pork into frying pan to warm through, adding the liquid from the pan they roasted in adds great flavor.

When pork is hot combine with rice and stir until everything is well combined. Quickly fry eggs in the now empty pan, breaking up and scrambling as it cooks. Combine with rice. Serve and enjoy!

Serves 4

Rice Cooker Spanish Yellow Rice

A great side for almost any protein imaginable. The rice cooker makes the rice come out perfect every single time.

Ingredients 

1 rice cooker cup of rice
fresh water
1 tbsp olive oil
half an onion diced very fine
half a pepper diced very fine
2 cloves garlic minced
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 chicken bouillon cube
1 packet Sazon Goya

Saute onion and peppers in olive oil for 4 minutes or until softened.
Add in tomato paste and cook 2 minutes more to remove "raw taste".
Dump washed rice into rice cooker.
Add sauteed vegetables, stir until rice is coated.
Add enough water to reach 'line 1'.
Place chicken bouillon cube and Sazon in rice.
Cover rice, set rice cooker to "cook", and cook until done.
Fluff , put top back on rice and let sit for 4 minutes. Serve.
Serves 2.

Alternative Method ****

Try substituting the onion, peppers, and garlic for 3 tbsp of store bought or homemade sofrito .

Crisp n Tasty Healthy Salad

Ingredients

4 cups of any combination of : lettuce (roughly chopped) tomato (sliced or chopped) cucumber (sliced thin) spinach onion (sliced extremely thin) carrot (slices thin)

1 lemon sliced in half

2 tbsp olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

Drizzle a tbsp or so of olive oil into the big bowl you're going to serve the salad in. 

Squeeze half the lemon on top of the oil. 

Sprinkle in a little salt and pepper. 

Place vegetables on top. Repeat steps 1 through 3. 

Serve and enjoy, the salad should be perfectly dressed!

Feeds 2

Perfect Easiest Scrambled Eggs

Everyone likes their scrambled eggs a certain way, this recipe is flexible enough for any way you like your eggs...but will still come out pefectly cooked every single time. Give this a try, they go well with our recipe for American style Bacon

Ingredients
6 eggs
1/2 teaspoon salt
dash of black pepper or red (cayenne) pepper
2 tbsp butter (or oil, or bacon fat)

Crack eggs carefully into a bowl. Check for and remove eggshell pieces before breaking egg yolks.

Add in salt and pepper. Grate onion over egg mixture.
Use a whisk or fork to beat eggs until the yolks are broken and mostly combined into one yellow mixture.

Heat butter, oil, or bacon fat in a pan on medium.

Add in eggs, continuously stirring so the bottom of the pan does not cook too fast. This is why I used a deeper saucepan.

At first mixture will look ugly as little pieces of cooked egg are stirred into the raw egg.

Keep stirring. Then= eggs will get thicker, resembling cottage cheese but tasting much better. Now turn your heat to low if you like your eggs drier, and off if you like your eggs more moist.

Continue to stir eggs using the residual heat from the pan until your eggs are at the "dryness" you prefer. They will always be prefectly creamy and delicious using this method.

Serves 3

Simple Foods For A Picnic

Beverages

Homemade Lemonade
Ahhhhh.... lemonade in a jar...so thirst quenching...so easy.
Bring a cup of sugar and a cup of water to a boil, take off heat and add a cup of lemon juice. Now just add enough water to dilute to your liking (3 to 4 cups is usually best), or half water half ice into a jar. Stir or shake it up well, and keep very very cold until picnic time.

Entrees

Classic Sandwich
Get a huge baguette or french loaf, cut down the middle horizontally. Now layer the inside with your favorite meats and cheeses, some good examples are ham, pork, turkey, chicken, or even lobster. Add some thinly sliced onion and tomato, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper. Now close everything up and cut into smaller sandwiches, for ease of eating during picnic time.

Fried Chicken
So delicious hot or cold. If you want to go real old school American then Fried Chicken is the way to go. We have a great recipe for delicious crispy juicy fried chicken here.

Eazy Peazy Potato Salad

An inexpensive and delicious meal isn't too hard to find, because I will be showing you some in the coming posts, but a dish THIS delicious and THIS inexpensive deserves some recognition. Potato Salad is the vice president of the American BBQ, a laughably easy way to get children to consume vegetables, and also a dish they make in Germany hot, or so I heard. I don't like to think of that last one, so I'll go back to the first point.

Make this dish for a BBQ, party, potluck, Christmas, or make a regular weeknight a whole lot more tasty. This particular recipe is really called Ensalada Rusa, so a Russian potato salad recipe that was given to me from a Dominican lady that made it every single night for her family. I kid you not, and it's by far the best potato salad I have ever had.

Start With The Basics (Like Basic White Rice)

Learning how to cook can be like learning to ride a bike, it feels un-natural at first but as soon as your body has the rhythm down you have a lifelong skill. Starting with a dish as simple as plain rice is great because not only does it go with almost any protein, vegetable, or legume...it's also a cinch to make! Here's how:


1 cup long grain rice
2 cups water
1 teaspoon salt 
1 teaspoon butter or oil (optional) 


Directions: 
1 In a saucepan with a lid ready bring water, salt and butter to a boil. 
2 Add rice and stir for one minute. 
3 Cover and reduce heat to medium low, if there's nuclear-cloud-sized steam leaking from your pot, you should probably set it to low. 
4 Cook for 20 minutes, without removing lid.
5 Remove from heat and fluff with fork. Cover pot and let sit 5 minutes.