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Monday, April 29, 2013

Supper For The Less Fortunate

Our neighbor attends a church that is part of a group of church’s providing food, shelter, and other assistance for short term homeless families and we offered to help with some meals.  We scheduled our first one to coincide with April's BBQ day so we could deliver the meat fresh out of the smoker.

My initial menu thought was to provide fairly classical BBQ fare of meat, beans, and mac & cheese.  Since it was big meat and chicken day on the smoker, I cooked a couple of pork butts and some thighs.  For the sides, I was thinking Ranch Beans until I found a recipe for baked beans that sounded good and could be cooked in a crock pot, requiring very little attention on a busy day.  The other side dish changed from mac & cheese to Pasta Salad Primavera to provide some veggies.  I looked at several recipes and ended up with the following:

Pasta Primavera Ala Larry

Ingredients:
2 lb. Rotini pasta (or your favorite)
4 cups carrot, diced
6 cups yellow squash, diced
6 cups broccoli, small florets
4 cups red bell pepper, diced
4 cups frozen peas, thawed
1 can black olives, halved
1 jar marinated artichoke hearts, halved
1 tsp. each dried oregano, basil, thyme leaves
½ - 1# hard salami, julienned
2 pkg. Kraft cheese crumbles, 4 cheese blend
½ cup parmesan, grated
1½ bottles Newman’s Caesar Dressing
¼ cup EVOO
S&P to taste

Directions:
1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and prepare a large ice water bath. Add carrots to the boiling water, and simmer 2 minutes.  Add squash, and cook 2 minutes more.  Add broccoli and bell pepper, and cook 2 minutes more.  Add peas, and cook 2 minutes more.
2. Pour everything into a large colander, drain, and dump into the ice water bath.  When cool dump back in the colander to drain, then into a large bowl or pan.
3. Refill the pot with salted water and bring to a rolling boil, add pasta, and to al dente. Dump in the colander and rinse under cold water to cool.
4. When cool, add the pasta to the veggies along with the next eight ingredients and carefully mix well.  
5. Taste, adjust S&P, and remix.  

I failed to get a shot of the delivered salad, so this is our bowl the next day but the broccoli had lost it’s bright green color.

For a pasta salad in which a lot of veggies are desired, this one is a very good and I will make it again.  It goes without saying (so why did I you ask?) that all ingredients can be varied for individual taste – we added the larger amount of salami to ours.  This recipe makes a bunch as written and one fourth of it would be about right for a regular batch.

Photos best if enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

4/17/13 meal date

11 comments:

  1. What a nice thing you and Bev did for the less fortunate and how thoughtful to include a lot of vegetables in the salad. Great meal.
    Sam

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  2. Very good Larry. Several times a year I feel guilty for not volunteering to those kinds of activities. I don't have a good pasta recipe lie this one. Bookmarked.

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  3. What a great thing for you to do! And I think the pasta salad sounds like a perfect addition to the meal. Looks fantastic!!

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  4. I can't think of a nicer thing to do-

    Your pasta salad I have no doubt was enjoyed.

    Velva

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  5. Great mission project, Larry... Lucky family(families) that received that meal. WOW!!!! Looks incredible. The pasta salad is perfect and did give them some veggies...

    Thanks for doing this. I worked for a church for many years --and we always appreciated volunteers who gave of themselves like you did. God Bless.

    Hugs,
    Betsy

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  6. A wonderful project and delicious food you picked to share.

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  7. I'm sure everyone enjoyed that pasta. It looks wonderful. I'm sure it made you happy to be able to do something you enjoy and help others at the same time.

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  8. I'll bet your meal was very greatly appreciated. It sounds delicious.

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  9. Larry, Very nice indeed! I'm sure that all of the food you cooked and this pasta dish that you created were much appreciated... Take Care, Big Daddy Dave and Laurie

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  10. I'm sure that everyone enjoyed your nice gesture and the food...it had to be delicious.

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  11. This looks and sounds like a delicious pasta salad and what a kind gesture for such a worthy cause Larry and Bev!

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