Tortellini Salad

Lucky me, I got the "pasta salad" assignment for two different get-togethers a week apart, and some of the same people will be at both events! This means I can't just make two big batches of my delicious Party Pasta Salad - I need to find a new pasta salad and hope to impress with it!

I got it in my head to do a tortellini salad, but the recipes I found online all included several ingredients that would be picked out by various party-goers, as we're generally a fussy bunch when it comes to food.

Because my other pasta salad is always well-received, I stuck with similar ingredients. This isn't a "recipe", because nothing was measured out, but I'll do my best to show you how to recreate it.

Frozen (or fresh) cheese tortellini

Italian salad dressing

Red onion

Cherry or grape tomatoes

Parmesan cheese

Cook and drain about 2 pounds of frozen tortellini. I used a little under half of the giant 5-pound bag of Seviroli brand frozen cheese tortellini from Costco, which is where I'm getting that "2 pounds" from. Rinse with cold water to cool them down, then drain well or dump into a large, clean dish towel to dry the pasta. Put into a bowl and douse with Italian dressing of your choice. I used about half a cup of Ken's Lite Northern Italian with Basil and Romano, but it's hard to say exactly how much to use, so assess your salad and adjust accordingly. Then I halved a pint of grape tomatoes and thinly sliced 1/4 of a red onion and tossed those in, immediately followed by some grated parmesan. The longer this stuff sits in the fridge, the better it tastes, so make this the night before you plan on eating it, if you can. Test it before serving it, and add some extra dressing if the pasta has soaked everything up and the salad has dried out.

What's For Dinner - 5-Spice Pork Tenderloin

This is another of my Mom's excellent recipes. It's the most delicious marinade for pork tenderloin that I've encountered yet. Usually, we make it in the oven, but since it's Memorial Day weekend, the start of grilling season, I decided to dust off the old Weber and ask my husband to play Grillmaster.

What you'll need, for two tenderloins:

5 cloves of garlic, minced or squeezed through a press

1 tsp salt

½ tsp ground ginger

3 tbsp soy sauce

4 tbsp honey

1 tsp five-spice*

*Note: I had a hard time finding this, until I realized it's often labeled as "Chinese Five-Spice Powder" and housed in the grocery store's alphabetized spice section accordingly.

First, have fun peeling the silver skin off the tenderloins. I'd offer you a how-to video, but I'm not that talented, and I don't think I have the look the Food Network folks are looking for. Lucky for us, the internet already contains pretty much everything imaginable, and this nice lady will show you how to trim a tenderloin.

Grind garlic, spices, and salt together. I use the back of a spoon to mash the stuff together. Mix your remaining ingredients in a big bowl, then rub the salt and spices into the meat. Massage those tenderloins like they've been working in the yard all day and you're working the knots out for them before they shower, and settle them into the honey and soy sauce bath -  they should be sitting in liquid, but they should not be covered by the liquid. Add more honey and soy sauce if you feel that they don't have enough marinade to soak in. Cover tightly and refrigerate several hours, or overnight if you can manage it. It helps if you can flip the meat in the marinade a few times while it's in the fridge, to make sure all parts get equal soaking.

To cook – fill the bottom of a pan with a half-inch of water, then place fillets on a rack over the water, to steam. Cook for 30 minutes at 350F, turning over once. Mom likes to use a broiler pan for this:

Since I don't have one, I use a regular roasting pan with a rack, and it comes out great. This was the first time I tried grilling the meat, and I followed some instructions from a cooking site that said to use medium heat and cook it for 4 minutes per side, but treat it like it has four sides. So, turn it 90 degrees each time instead of a full flip. Grills and heat distribution will vary, as will the thickness of the tenderloins, so use a meat thermometer. When you see 140 or so, you can pull the meat off the grill and cover it in foil - it will keep cooking for a few minutes and reach the recommended 145.

Here's the result:

Still a little pink in the middle, very tender, with a tasty grilled crust. I'm sorry the quality of my photos tends towards the painfully amateur... it's a good thing I'm not a serious food blogger!

This makes a great dinner with rice and salad, but it also makes a tasty cold appetizer. Just slice it thinner than you would if it was for dinner, and serve it on its own or with crackers. It's spiced garlic pork - I can't imagine anyone waving a hand at it and saying "no thanks, I'll stick with the carrots and ranch dip".

What's for Dinner - Fresh Tomato Salad

I love having a Costco membership, but the danger is that I end up with ridiculous amounts of food every time I go. Most of the time it's frozen or non-perishable stuff, so I've got plenty of time to make my way through it all, but sometimes I'm tempted by the produce section, and with just the two of us here at home, it can be hard to avoid wasting anything. For example, I picked up a huge clamshell container of cherry tomatoes recently, thinking we could use them in salads all week, but honestly, how many tomatoes can you put in an average salad?

That's why I tried making a tomato salad instead, as a side. To be honest, it turned out suspiciously like tomato bruschetta, but the balsamic vinegar and the fact that I am pointedly not serving it with bread is enough to convince me I can call it something different.

Fresh Tomato Salad

40 cherry tomatoes
1 tbsp diced red onion
4 large basil leaves
1 clove garlic, chopped fine
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
Generous grind of black pepper


Cut the tomatoes in half, cut the basil leaves in a chiffonade, (little strips) then mix everything together in a bowl or tupperware. Let it sit at room temperature for at least an hour, and mix it up a little to let everything marinate together. It's good cold or at room temperature. I didn't feel the need for salt, but I won't be mad at you if you add some.

Party Pasta Salad

I don't know why pasta salads only ever seem to show up at parties and picnics, because they're easy and delicious. This one, as you can guess from my title, was made for a party. My sister-in-law's baby shower, that is. Because it was made for a big party, it's a big recipe! This will serve a crowd at a party or as a side for a cookout. It's a recreation of a pasta salad I once bought at the deli counter at Giant.

1 box pasta, cooked and drained - I like farfalle or tri-colored pastas
1 pint grape or cherry tomatoes, halved
1 small red pepper, chopped into small pieces
Half a red onion, cut into rings, then cut the rings in half
1/2 cup (packed) baby spinach leaves, chopped
2/3 cup sundried tomato salad dressing
1 tsp dried oragano
1/4 cup shredded parmesan or asiago cheese
salt & pepper

Directions: mix everything, chill in the fridge a while to let the flavors mix, and then eat.

The amount of dressing you need will vary depending on your taste, and on the noodles. I sometimes find I need to add more after the salad has sat in the fridge overnight, because the noodles drink in all the dressing and leave the salad a little dry. I'm sure it would be tasty with other dressings, too, but I haven't played around with that yet.

Because I was so busy with the party, I forgot to take a picture of the one I made this weekend, but I had a picture from the last time I threw it together:

As with all pasta salads, it's flexible and you can change the amounts of the ingredients or omit some altogether. Oh, and because this is meat-free and not made with mayonnaise, it can sit out on the table for a while without poisoning your party. A big plus!

Appetizer - Spinach-Cheese Swirls

These were also made for the New House Party. I printed the recipe off the Pepperidge Farm Puff Pastry website, which has dozens of awesome uses for a sheet of frozen puff pastry and which I'll likely visit again for more appetizer ideas. I brought the page with me when I went shopping, to make sure I picked up everything I needed, and then when I finally got down to it Friday night, in the kitchen with everything ready to go, I couldn't find the stupid paper. So I had to delay my project as I hunted it down online and re-printed it so I had instructions. And then discovered at the very end when I threw the puff pastry box into the recycling bin that the recipe was on the back of it the whole time. Durr.

The recipe is here. I followed it exactly except that I had no garlic powder, so I used garlic salt instead. The pastry cracked a little as I rolled it but it held together decently. Cutting it was very hard - maybe it was because my knife wasn't sharp enough, but I squashed it pretty flat as I cut it so I ended up with flattened ovals instead of pretty round swirls. I also should have greased the cookie sheet, because they stuck a little and I had to chip some of them off. Oh, and I need to acquire a pastry brush. Applying an egg wash with a fork is not very efficient or effective.


The result was underwhelming: they were edible (and pretty) but not really anything special. I would have thought that garlic and cheese and spinach always combine and create glorious yumminess, but this flopped. How could it, when it is made from all the flavors I love best? It tasted like a spinach pie, and not a particularly good one. It needed salt, and probably a lot more garlic and parmesan. I might try it again and tweak it for more flavor, but it's not high on my list of retries. Oh well.

Appetizer -My Sister's Awesome Dip

I made this layered dip for the New House Party and it was a huge hit. I made sure to give my sis all the credit by referring to it exclusively as "My sister's awesome dip" throughout the evening. She gave me this recipe in the family cookbook, so it's special to me.

My Sister's Awesome Dip

8 oz soft cream cheese
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup mayonnaise

Mix well and spread into a pie plate or casserole dish

1 medium jar of salsa (spiciness of your choice)
1 medium green pepper, chopped
2 green onions, chopped
1 large tomato, chopped
2 cups shredded cheese (mozzarella, monterey jack, whatever you like)

Spread salsa over cream cheese mix, then add chopped veggies and cover with shredded cheese. I used a pre-shredded "Mexican blend" to make my life easier.
Serve with scoopy chips. For scooping.

Note the "Pi" plate I served it in. That was a Christmas present from my Dad, and I love it. My sister-in-law reminded me that Pi Day is approaching faster than we realize, and that I will have to bake a pie for the occasion, especially now that I have the absolutely most perfect pie plate to bake it in. So, I'll need to master pie crust by March 14th. Wish me luck.