I came up with this recipe because tonight we are having a dinner guest who doesn’t like tomatoes. I wanted to make a pasta salad, but I knew omitting one of my favorite ingredients would force me get creative. My mother-in-law made a delicious salad last weekend with chickpeas, so I decided to that beans would be the base of the pasta salad. Because the olive oil, rotini & cheese were already in my pantry/fridge, this also made for a inexpensive pasta salad at under 7 dollars. It would’ve been cheaper if I hadn’t bought the pre-sliced veggies, but I thought the extra dollar saved me chopping time. I had a small bowl (warm) after making the pasta salad, and it was definitely a success. The onions give it crunch and kick! Enjoy! Let me know if you try it!

Rachel’s Three Bean Pasta Salad

½ box of rotini noodles (leftover from our last pasta salad)
1 can cannellini beans (All beans are Bush’s)
1 can light red kidney beans
1 can garbanzo beans/chickpeas
½ container Walmart pre-sliced green onion
½ container Walmart pre-sliced red onion (leftover veggies are destined for a weekend frittata)
½ block mozzarella cheese, cubed (leftover from our last pasta salad)
Splash of olive oil

Boil noodles. While noodles are boiling, chop up veggies (if needed) and cube the cheese (Derrick likes small chunks, and I like big, crazy chunks—cube to your personal preference. Tonight I went with small, bean-sized cubes). Drain noodles, and put them in a big bowl. Drain the beans. Add beans, veggies, and cheese to big bowl. Mix carefully as you add each ingredient, since pasta salads want to explode when stirred. Drizzle top of bowl with olive oil. Refrigerate 3 hours. Serve.

I first posted about Trail Mix several weeks ago. We just finished that batch.

This is Trail Mix Take Two. We eliminated the sunflower seeds because they’re too small. We decided we needed another fruit/something sweet, so we added the yogurt covered raisins, which are cute and look like little eggs.

Trailmix ala RayRay:
almonds, cashews, goldfish, peanut butter m&ms, yogurt covered raisins and pineapple

Any suggestions as to how we can make it even better?

Derrick says that my blog has basically turned into one where I write recipes for poor people. But seriously, think about my life as a grad student. What do I do all day? I sleep, I write, I teach, I go to class, I watch movies, and I grade papers. Am I capable of doing any or all of these things if I’m hungry? Absolutely not!

So that was my rationale for making trailmix. School starts tomorrow, and I want to have a healthy ready snack on hand to put in a ziplock baggie and take over to campus. I know that there are premade bags available, but this seems overpriced and sometimes not catered to my flavor tastes. Making it in bulk and putting it in proper tupperware container should be much more cost effective in the long run

Here’s what I decided belonged in trailmix. What am I missing? I appreciate your help for the next batch.

Trailmix ala RayRay:
almonds, cashews, goldfish, sunflower seeds, peanut butter m&ms and pineapple

Not all of my meals are successes. I screw up more than I care to admit. But today I felt like trying a new recipe. When Derrick and I were deciding what to eat for dinner, macaroni and cheese came up. We have three boxes of Kraft Mac&Cheese (it was on sale for 57 cents a box at Walmart) and one box of Velveeta shells & cheese.

But I looked in the pantry at the sad box of Cellentani sitting by itself. As you loyal readers know, I was supposed to make pasta salad yesterday before my discovery of the toxic redrum mold. That box of tiny little corkscrew-shaped enriched macaroni product was just staring up at me, and I knew that it needed to be cooked. This noodle is perfect in terms of both appearance and texture. It’s perfectly little engineered shape will hold anything, from olive oil to spaghetti sauce to cheese. Cellentani was worth the risk of adding a new fancy dish, and it matched the already “yellow plate” of grilled chicken and squash! In case you don’t know what I’m talking about at all, here’s a linky: http://www.barillaus.com/Home/Pages/Cellentani.aspx

The grilled chicken, seasoned with Tony Chacheres, was delicious. Derrick hit a home run. This was also my first time cooking squash. I sautéed it in a little pan with butter, then salted and peppered it once it was on the plate. I definitely overdid it on the butter. I’m going to post the Mac & Cheese recipe that I used/adjusted a lot/sort of invented with the help of Commonsense cookbook. I’m also going to post what I think needed to be improved. I’ll appreciate any comments/suggestions as well!

Macaroni & Cheese ala RayRay

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Today I was preparing to make my famous favorite pasta salad for dinner and blog about it. I opened the fridge, pulled out the mozzarella and was appalled to find a spot of red mold right in the middle of it. RED. I even called Mom & Dad to see if mold could be red. Dad and I had a conversation just yesterday about how often college kids get sick by cutting mold off of bread and cheese and eating around the “safe parts”. As a paranoid food eater, I toss out everything at the first sign of spots, stink, or expiration date. Regardless of what Lars Eighner may have told me about food’s everlasting powers , I am conservative in my decision of what to eat and not to eat. (See here if you haven’t had the chance to read his “Dumpster Diving”; M-ville people: I had a blast when I taught this essay! http://www1.broward.edu/~nplakcy/docs/dumpster_diving.htm)

As my planned dinner was thrown out the window, I decided to improvise and try to make French toast for the second time. I made it for the first time a week or so ago, and the results were okay, but the meal was not necessarily a success. Last time, I followed the instructions in Cooking: a commonsense guide to a tee. I really enjoy this cookbook because it contains a lot of basic information, like how to cut up a chicken, how to cook an egg over easy—simple stuff that I’ve never necessarily tried but want to do! I recommend adding it to your collection if you’re a mostly beginner cook like me.

So this time, I decided to Rachel-ize the recipe, and it turned out fantastic.

Commonsense Cholesterol-Free French Toast ala RayRay

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This recipe is common sense, but, for the sake of this blog entry and my ego, we’ll say that I’ve invented it.  There are lots of variations on this recipe–some people use English muffins, biscuits, or bagels, and I like to think that these people are wrong.  The charm in my particular recipe is that you should ALWAYS have the 5 main ingredients in your fridge at all times.  These are not solely kept around for the purpose of making a Poor Man’s Pizza, but because they are versatile ingredients that you can use in making lots of other Poor Man (or Woman!) meals.

Poor Man’s Pizza ala RayRay

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