Pasta Salad with Creamy Greek Yogurt & Basil Dressing
Plus, 5 Dinners in Real Life
Hi!
How has your week been? As of yesterday, both of my kids are back at school. The house is quiet. The kitchen, which started out clean this morning, is still clean because the kids aren’t coming in fixing something to eat every 20 minutes. It feels like a miracle.
For the first time in months my attention isn’t jumping back and forth between trying to work from home while also tending to the needs and whims of my kids. My kids are delightful but it’s hard to focus when they’re around. Like most parents, I’m really good at multi-tasking. I can cook dinner and order things from Amazon and respond to an email and do laundry and get my kids ready for swim practice at the same time. This is because multi-tasking doesn’t require focus. It’s just skimming across the surface of your life and knocking out little tasks. You might be getting a lot done but you aren’t sinking into the depths of your mind where it’s calm and quiet and you can access the part of your brain that thinks deeply.
When I’m multi-tasking for too long and surrounded by the inevitable distractions and interruptions of life and parenting, my mind feels jumbled and unfocused. I feel jittery and over-caffeinated. I guess that’s why people meditate? Hmmm. I honestly can’t see myself starting a meditation practice, but you never know.
With or without meditation, I’m looking forward to multi-tasking less and focusing more this fall. To borrow a phrase from Cal Newport, I want to focus on deep work instead of productivity.
What about you? As the season starts to shift, what little changes are you looking forward to making?
Recipe of the Week: Pasta Salad with Creamy Greek Yogurt & Basil Dressing
You might have noticed that I’m in pasta salad mode. I sent paid subscribers a bonus recipe for orzo pasta salad with lemon on parsley on Tuesday and today I’m sharing a recipe with everyone for this pasta salad made with creamy Greek yogurt dressing flavored with basil and feta.
Pasta salad is good for dinner, it’s good for lunch, it’s good for hot weather, and the main ingredient is pasta. What is there not to love?
Instead of using mayonnaise, this creamy dressing is made by blending Greek yogurt, feta cheese, fresh basil, garlic and green onion. I really like chicken breast added to this salad, but it’s great with just veggies, too. You can find the recipe HERE.
Step 1: Cook the pasta in generously salty water.
Step 2: In a food processor, combine Greek yogurt with basil, feta, green onion, garlic and salt.
Step 3: Mix the dressing into the cooled pasta.
Step 4: Add any additional ingredients that you like, such as cherry tomatoes, green onion, crumbled feta, cucumber, roasted zucchini, chicken breast, etc.
5 Dinners in Real Life
I’m always curious about what other families are eating. Aren’t you? I hope that my week of real life dinners will provide helpful recipes & cooking ideas for your family. Here’s what my crew ate last week:
Monday: BLTs and sunny orzo pasta. Gosh, I love BLTs! The easiest and least messy way to cook bacon is in the oven. Just line up strips of bacon on rimmed sheet-pans lined with foil. You don't need to preheat the oven, just put a sheet-pan of bacon into the cold oven and set the heat to 425 F. (Starting bacon in a cold oven helps it cook and render fat slowly, which some chefs say makes bacon crispier). Start checking the bacon after 10 minutes and continue cooking the bacon until it's as crispy as you like. It usually needs a total baking time of about 20 minutes.
Tuesday: I tried a new recipe for fish chowder, which was delicious, but my kids weren’t super impressed with hot chowder for dinner when the outside temp was 93 degrees. Sorry kids, that’s what happens when your mom is a recipe developer who’s already thinking about autumn recipes!
Wednesday: I fell back on a standard easy dinner at our house: marinated tofu, roasted broccoli, rice and Trader Joe’s egg rolls.
Thursday: Trader Joe’s to the rescue again, this time with cheese ravioli and red sauce, plus salad and sliced melon on the side.
Friday: Sigh. I can’t remember what we ate for dinner last Friday. Life is a blur right now and I can barely even remember what I ate yesterday. Can anyone relate?
Cookbooks
In the Green Kitchen by Alice Waters is both a cookbook and a homage to notable chefs from the early 2000s. In this way the book feels a little dated (the cookbook was written in 2010). Nevertheless, it’s still a great cookbook because of the simple techniques it teaches, like dressing a salad, making croutons & breadcrumbs and poaching an egg. There is no doubt that you’ll learn something from this cookbook; reading it is like cooking with a friend who’s sharing their kitchen tips with you.
You’ll also find simple recipes for things like leek and potato soup, chicken noodle soup with dill and baked fish with parsley butter. The emphasis is on uncomplicated recipes with a short list of high-quality ingredients - exactly what Alice Waters is known for.
That’s it for this week! Enjoy your weekend, and I’ll see you back here next Thursday!
Jenny