Earl Revives Party Pasta Salad for "Turkey"

As you may have read here, my wife (a.k.a. "Turkey") does not care for most pasta dishes. She thinks "pasta" is well named, as Webster defines it: "paste in processed form". I have managed to get her to like some pastas when cooked right with the proper sauce. In the 1980's pasta became SALAD. Not a dish served hot, with a rich, meaty & cheesy sauce but cold and mixed with veggies and, unbelievably - uncooked ramen noodles!

At Daughter #2's birthday party last week, we ate well and laughed hard. We ate burgers and all beef hot dogs cooked to perfection by my son-in-law (a.k.a. "Rutt") and pasta salad made by my daughter. We also had a Texas Sheet Cake, expertly crafted by my son-in-law's mom. The wind kicked up and the candles looked like a mini forest fire. What a great way to spend an evening! Family - Friends - Food, an unbeatable combination.

All of this leads me to the reason for this post. We came home with some pasta salad leftovers and I was able to make it into something "Turkey" ate and enjoyed. To the basic pasta salad I added:

• Avocado
• Tomatoes
• Pepperoni
• Balsamic Vinaigrette
• Italian Cheese Mixture
• Fresh Spinach

If it seems like I made a whole new salad, I did add lots of components to make it a refreshing dinner on a VERY hot summer's evening. Thanks to my daughter, we I ate two very different  pasta salads that week, both of which were much better than those of the 80's!

Earl Cooks Grilled Romaine Dinner Salad - EEK!

My dear wife a.k.a. "Turkey" knows I love to buy cooking equipment, and she hates to shop...for me! She says I am impossible to buy for, so we usually end up going shopping together and picking our own stuff out. Well this year for Father's Day, I knew exactly what I wanted...an indoor grill/griddle for our stove top.  Ever since I dog sat for daughter #2, and used hers, I have wanted one. See post Earl Cooks Grilled Ham Steak and Two Squashes while Dog Sitting . We have a gas grill and a charcoal grill/smoker, but what a hassle to drag them out, clean them up, prep them and finally cook! The TV chefs use them all the time, so I thought it would be a tool we could take advantage of!

I have never grilled lettuce before and didn't know what I would end up with. There were several
recipes, but I don't need no stinkin' recipe! I heated up the grill and gather the items together we like in any salad. What you see are great grill marks and I just used a bit of olive oil and salt & pepper. The good stuff will come later!

What we used to top our salad was light balsamic vinegar, then (from top left going clockwise), mozzarella pearls, Parmesan chunks, bacon bits, hard cooked eggs (I like mine sliced, "Turkey" likes hers diced), and finally, bottom left grape tomatoes! 

 I usually put my homemade croutons in our dinner salads, but I couldn't find room! It filled a PLATTER!...oh, and ME TOO!

Results & Conclusions:
This was very good. If you make this get VERY crisp lettuce. Top it with what you like. This was ALMOST meatless, but VERY satisfying! 

Earl Makes Arugula Spinach Salad with Fennel, Bacon Chunks & Spanish Goat Cheese

Arugula Spinach Salad with Fennel, Bacon & Goat Cheese

We recently discovered a couple of additions to our homemade salads that really brighten the flavor and improve the crunch...arugula and fennel! Arugula has a nice bite to it, a bit like a radish, and fennel a hint of anise or licorice. Both add to the overall taste and texture of a homemade salad and are great additions.We like them so much that when I saw a Spinach & Arugula mix, I had to try it! Arugula is hard to find in the run-of-the-mill grocery stores for some reason, so I usually get mine at Trader Joe's. Finding this mix with arugula and spinach was a real departure for me because I usually don't buy mixes and almost never buy organic produce. We have both always loved spinach salads so I hoped the addition of arugula would make a great salad.

Trader Joe's Fennel Bulb

But an idea was formulating for a salad that had RAW fennel. It's texture is nice and crunchy, much like celery, but with that great hint of licorice. I have roasted it, but never had it raw in a dish until tonight. The fennel comes partially trimmed from Trader Joe's, all I had to do is cut it in half and slice the half lengthwise into salad size chunks. I should say bite size, because my wife (a.k.a. "Turkey"), thought my chunks were a bit big.

In addition to the arugula & spinach mix and the fennel bulb, I added grape tomatoes, halved, green onions (white & green portions), two kinds of cheese (Spanish goat cheese and blue cheese), my home-baked bacon chunks and my homemade croutons along with bottled dressing.Turkey decided against the cheeses, but liked the salad so much she took it to work for lunch the next day!

Earl Cooks an Iceberg Wedge Salad

We first ate a wedge salad at Tony Roma's many years ago. I believe we were eating there for our anniversary, and we were quite amazed that something which required so little preparation produced such great results! As you know, it is a bit of a stretch to say that a salad is cooked...it is really assembled, but I did cook the hard eggs and made bacon crumbles from strips of bacon.

If you have never tried Wishbone® Chunky Blue Cheese Salad Dressing, you should. It was chosen by America's Test Kitchen as their off-the-shelf favorite. I usually eat their fat free variety, but their full fat is marvelous! 

Traditionally lettuce is simply quartered, but it is tough to dress and eat it this way, especially if you add quite a few components, and we usually do. Tonight ours included grape tomatoes, hard cooked eggs, green onions, bacon, blue cheese, and a few capers. It was our whole meal and it was very good. My wife, a.k.a."Turkey", usually a dainty eater, made it look like she had licked the plate clean. And I enjoyed mine, remembering fondly that first wedge salad at Tony Roma's, a restaurant now lost to us.

Earl Eats BLAT Salad for Dinner

 My BLAT Salad Components & My BLAT Salad Dressed with Blue Cheese

What? You have never heard of a BLAT? In our house BLATs are a staple! If you have had a BLT, you've almost had a BLAT...Bacon, Lettuce, Tomato and AVOCADO. (we had to do a bit of rearranging to make BLAT - BLTA just wasn't right.) When living in Mexico in the mid 70s, one of the places I lived was the avocado capital of Mexico, Morelia,, Michoacán. The avocados were the size of softballs and perfectly ripened. My father loved avocados and I wish I had been able to send him one like those available in the market there daily. Back then, in the states, we only rarely saw avocados because of their delicate nature. We didn't have them year round like we do today. It's winter and I just bought them on sale! Back to our BLATS...

My wife (a.k.a. "Turkey") prefers salads to sandwiches, So I thought I would deconstruct a BLAT and make a salad, since she would probably make hers into a salad anyway. The ingredients are:

Crumbled Bacon, Butter Lettuce, one Haas Avocado, Grape Tomatoes, Homemade Croûtons and for mine, Fat Free Chunky Blue Cheese Dressing.Only a couple of these are not standard BLT components. The salad dressing is a substitute for mayo or Miracle Whip, the croûtons are a substitute for bread and the crumbled bacon for strips of bacon.

As you can see in the top photo, On the left, I have the components sorted on the lettuce, and then assembled and dressed to the right. How can you go wrong with bacon, tomatoes, and avocados topped with blue cheese? You can't and we didn't. It was marvelous and filling!

A SIDE NOTE:

My wife chose Hidden Valley Cilantro Lime for her dressing and no croûtons. What can I say, nobody's perfect!😁

Earl Eats Porterhouse Pork Chop at Outback

I should start by saying that I have never cared for Outback Steakhouse. I have always felt a bit disappointed by their offerings. In fact, while checking my journal (facebook) I found it had been 5 years to the day since we ate there last! But my wife A.K.A "Turkey", got a gift card and that was enough to make me be less disappointed no matter the food, so off down under we went. Let me begin by saying that the staff was great! We went early enough (5 p.m.) to eat and get back in time to watch the Utah Jazz. We were seated right away with no waiting. The whole restaurant was spotless. The lighting was of particular interest because it gave us plenty of light without being harsh or overly bright. On to the meal...

They started off by letting us know that they were out of "their" bread because of the successful holiday traffic (it was 2 days after the New Year) which surprised and disappointed me (there's that word again). Bread is something that can be made in-house or purchased from a commercial bakery fairly easily. They probably have some special recipe they have shipped in frozen since they are a chain, but that's no excuse. However, they did not let us down! They offered their Bloomin' Onion appetizer rather than bread at NO CHARGE! Great save, Outback! It was a great way to save the day👍, and the onion was zesty and hot and their dipping sauce delicious, even though not quite enough, but they brought more upon request.

I ordered what they call their Porterhouse Pork Chop after seeing this picture from their menu. It was very tasty and cooked just right. It was fork tender and came with 2 sides (mashed potatoes and broccoli, which were just okay), and I found myself picking it up to get the last of the meat from the bone. It was reasonably priced and worth the money.


My wife ordered a seafood trio which included a lobster tail, a crab cake, and 1 grilled shrimp skewer. She also upgraded her side salad to a lettuce wedge, which she shared with me. She enjoyed the crab cake. She would not let me tell them that the lobster tail and shrimp were a bit rubbery, so I didn't. The salad was the star of her meal and we do like their bleu cheese dressing. Rather, let me say I LOVE bleu cheese, and she likes it on this wedge.

Conclusion:
While there were disappointments, we were not disappointed with the overall experience. I am not sure what the significance of going to a restaurant with "steakhouse" in the name and not wanting a steak is, but we would go back, just for the Lettuce Wedge and Bloomin' Onion!
By the Numbers:
Overall Experience ⭐⭐⭐☆☆
Price 💲💲💲

Earl Eats "Turkey's" Super Supper Salad

From top left: Cherry Tomatoes, Hard-Cooked Eggs,
Green Onion, Blue Cheese, Avocado & Bacon

My Salad on the Left and "Turkey's" on the right
I also added cottage cheese to mine.

It seemed like a great night for a dinner salad and I had some great components—Cherry Tomatoes, Hard-Cooked Eggs, Green Onion, Avocado, crumbled bacon, blue cheese and lettuce. I was all set to make it except for 1 thing. My wife, AKA "Turkey", likes her green onions sliced extremely thin, thinner than I am able to slice them apparently, and she likes the tomatoes halved, ever since I tried to poke mine with a fork and shot tomato clear down the other end of the table at a wedding banquet some 40 years ago, which, of course, she remembers to this day! So I asked her if she would slice the onion and the tomatoes, thinking I would continue and do the rest, when I got to the kitchen she had done everything, as shown above! All that was left was each of us putting our salad together and dressing it. I was surprised she wanted to do it, and I think she was a bit surprised too! Here they are, she chose Cilantro Lime Ranch Dressing and I went with Chunky Blue Cheese. My dad loved Roquefort when I was growing up and I learned to love the flavor and my mom taught us to love hard-cooked eggs on our salads. My grandpa loved growing tomatoes and while in Mexico, I lived in the avocado capital where the best avocados I have ever eaten were found, so in this simple meal, much history is revealed and memories jogged.

Earl Cooks Cucumber Salad with Mozzarella Pearls & Tomatoes

The genesis of this recipe comes from  Lydia Bastianich, although I doubt she would want credit. Sometimes, just to take a break from our meat-centric diet, I prepare something almost vegetarian for dinner. This is one of those dishes. It is very simple and surprisingly satisfying.

We start with Mozzarella pearls, usually found in the deli section but may be in the cheese section. I keep these on-hand all the time. They make a great addition to many dishes and can be used like any other mozzarella cheese in pasta or on pizza. They are fairly inexpensive and well worth it. The package I buy is vacuum packed and they keep for a very long time in the fridge.