"They call me Mr. Gimp!"

Or if Easter was a clue, my family lovingly referred to me as Dr. House all afternoon long. Thanks everyone, I'll make sure to only 'partially' beat you all to death with my cane when I catch you.

But in other news, I am healing up, even if the ligament damage is REALLY annoying. Mostly cause I don't listen to what my limitation are and my cat's favorite current game is "make Daddy scream." Jerk cat, but I love him. Or contemplating how to best cook him next time he gets underfoot in the kitchen.

I am slowly getting away from the processed crap that I've been forced to call food for the last few weeks, it couldn't come sooner! Granted, I have slowly been doctoring food to my taste over the last few weeks as I could stand more, but there's something about eating a meal that you made from near scratch that makes you a very happy camper. Much like today's recipe, this is a variation of a cold pasta salad that I learned to make on the Camino de Santiago from one of my fellow peregrinos, this is more of a "eye ball it until it is right" dish. I hope you enjoy!

Pilgrim Pasta Salad

Tools:

Large pot to cook the pasta in

Strainer

Large bowl with lid for the salad

Mixing Spoon

Cutting Board

Knife

Small bowl to nuke the veggies in.

Ingredients

Three hand fulls of wheat rigatoni pasta

Good olive oil

Red wine vinegar

4-6 diced up sun dried tomatoes packed in olive oil

1 can of lima beans, drained and rinsed

1/4 cup of frozen miropoix mix(carrot, onion, and celery)

1/2 cup of frozen spinach

5 tablespoons of a good Italian spice mix (I like the one from Aldi's if you have one of those)

2 tablespoons of lemon pepper spices (see above)

1 tablespoon minced garlic or garlic powder

water

The biggest trick with pasta is getting the largest pot that you own and filling it with as much water as it can hold. The more boiling water you have, the better, because this will keep the pasta from sticking together as it cooks. You want it filled until a good inch or two from the lip of the pot. Put it on the burner and crank the heat to the highest setting. Once the water is boiling, cook the pasta for 7 to 8 minutes, and then drain it through the strainer.

While this is going on, nuke the sun dried tomatoes in the smaller bowl in 5-10 second increments until they are slightly warm. This will help release a lot of flavor into the salad. Dice them up finely and add them to your final serving bowl. The same trick can be used on fresh garlic to help release all those wonderful flavors, but you'll need to add a couple big drops of olive oil on each piece of garlic you are doing this trick on.

Once the tomatoes are in the larger bowl, nuke the rest of the veggies in 30 second increments until they thaw and cook just slightly. And by just slightly I mean they are too hot to pick up with your fingers, but not nuked to the point that you have a flashback of the war you had with your mother and those crappy, nuked until mush, green peas. If you fear a flashback like this, go eat a bar of chocolate and laugh that your an adult now who knows better.

Once the veggies are thawed and just getting hot, add them to the large mixing bowl.

This leaves the lima beans. Oh, our mortal enemy growing up. A fantastic thing about canned beans are that they are cooked when they are being packed, so unless they have meat product in them (like pork and beans), they can be eaten right out of the can. Drain the beans in the strainer and rinse them until all the can goo is gone, adding them into the mixing bowl.

Finally the pasta should be just about done, drain the pasta and add it into the mixing bowl.

Here comes the seasoning, add all the dried seasoning to the pasta and then you'll want to add olive oil and vinegar in a 3 to 1 ratio (three parts oil to one of vinegar) in SMALL increments. You don't want to drown the salad in dressing! As you pour in both ingredients, mix the salad with your spoon, coating everything in that olive oil/vinegar/spice mix. At the very most I tend to use only a quarter to a third of a cup of oil/vinegar mix on this salad, and that's when I make a slightly bigger batch.

And now you have a delicious salad that is good for you and tastes fantastic as is, but the trick to get all the flavors to blend is covering the bowl up and plopping it in the refrigerator for two or three hours so all the flavors can mix.

And with that you have a dish perfect for a meal or to take to a large family pot-luck. It is cheap, economical, and best of all, really filling.

Bien Camino!