RECIPE: Greek-Style Pasta Salad Recipe

I should have been happy to provide you with a recipe fit for the American season, one that uses leftover turkey. But my degree of Jewish observance has resurged since Summer, so I am no longer cooking meat. It’s not that meat can’t be Kosher, it’s that in my 400 square foot apartment, I lack the room for meat dishes, pots, and utensils.

Thus, I give you today an “ordinary day” recipe. I hope that you like this inexpensive version of a tangy Greek salad.

RECIPE: Greek-Style Pasta Salad

1 lb macaroni, preferably a large shape, cooked according to package directions (but for the shortest time indicated,) drained in a colander and rinsed with cold water to cease the cooking promptly.

In a small jar, mix the dressing:

½ c olive oil

½ tsp garlic powder

4 T lemon juice

3 T rice vinegar, preferably plain rice vinegar (unseasoned)

1 tsp dried oregano

1 tsp salt

¼ tsp black pepper, preferably freshly-ground

Slice 6-8 radishes.

Chop 2 scallions.

Dice 2 carrots.

Drain 1 15-oz can of tomatoes (you can dice them directly in the can with kitchen shears.)

Drain 1 6-oz can of black olives. You can use either whole or sliced ones.

If you have capers on hand, they make a lovely touch to this salad. Measure 2 T.

Crumble 8 oz of feta cheese.

Add all to the pasta in a bowl (approximately 4-qt) and mix well.

Toss in the bowl with the dressing that you made.

Practical and Spiritual Reflections on Living with a Temperamental Oven

(Background: I’ve had five different stoves since early Summer, 2018! The first one had both carbon monoxide and gas leaks. The second and third AND fourth had gas leaks! The fifth, my current, runs safely—no toxicities emitted. G-d be thanked (along with my building’s management.) BUT it is as temperamental as a wood stove as far as the oven goes. Not only does it run very hot—more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the dial setting would indicate—but also it has no insulation and the heat is concentrated on its top portion, especially on one side of the oven.)

Home economists would prescribe use of a free-standing oven thermometer. Basically, my mobility disorder comes down to severe tremor, and I would knock a thermometer over in the course of inserting/removing pans. So much for the thermometer that I bought long ago when less tremulous—it hangs near the sink now for decoration!

The extent of the problem is as follows. For a recipe for an oven-baked Indian rice pilaf that called for a baking time of 50 minutes at 350 degrees, I must adjust the time and temp to 40 minutes at 250 degrees this morning!

Furthermore, pans need to be adjusted up and down as well as turned about.

Such expertise did not come easily. So many batches of baked goods burned at top or bottom before I learned to check as early as when the first one-third of the recipe’s stated time had elapsed. In addition, I learned to reduce the temperature of the oven by 100 degrees from the recipe’s stated heat level.

It reminds me of the time when I lived in an apartment where the only source of heat was a fireplace. Keeping the wood types (size, tree origin) and amounts accurate so as to maintain some warmth was a learning experience indeed.

G-d never gives us anything that we can’t handle. Angels hover over us from birth to manage our exercise of free will morally while G-d’s planned course of events, which Jews consider as a never-diminishing series of tests of character, works itself out. Everything eventually turns out for the good. It is up to us to be steadfast when we can’t see the why, which is always our human condition. When we have worked out the problems that G-d sent us to Earth to repair, He calls us home.

It’s Time for Timers—Times Two!

Timers—I have a reason that you will see for using the word in the plural—make cooking and baking ever so much easier! I use two at once.

The ones that I’ve purchased from Amazon are by the Sminiker company. A pair of two costs $13.86 at the time of this writing. See https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01A0AZTMI/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

These are by far the most reliable timers that I have ever found! 

1. They have magnets to cling to your refrigerator. 
2. They can be used to count minutes and seconds. 
3. They can be used up to 99 minutes. 
4. They are digital and have a large-type display so you can read them from yards away. 
5. And, these timers also have a stopwatch function! 
6. Best of all, they use simple AAA batteries, easily able to be procured, thereby giving the timers very long life.

(When the Sminiker timers arrive, open the battery compartment of each. Remove the protective plastic sleeve—they will not work otherwise!)

Why the need for TWO timers? Obviously, you can time two stove-top dishes at once. But, for oven use, there are two more advantages:

• ·         You can be alerted to the fact that you need to go into the kitchen to tend to foods that the recipe says will be ready in five minutes—you never know if they will be ready early or late….
• ·         If you are cooking a casserole or a roast, you can set a timer ten minutes before the recipe says that the baking time is over. That way, you can turn the oven off early (but leave its door tightly closed!) to save energy.

Cooking Beans in a Slow Cooker

When the original Crock-Pot® was developed in the Sixties, it was designed to be used to cook beans. To this day, I find that purpose to be its ideal use. Beans so cooked are flavorsome and tender.

A vegan hint is to add a piece the size of your thumbnail of kombu, a seaweed that you can find at natural food stores, to the cooking liquid. It helps immensely with digestibility.

One pound of dried beans will produce three or four canning jars, pint-sized, of cooked beans, when filled as prescribed with an inch or so of head-room from their lids.

I’ve learned from Robin Robertson in her Fresh from the Vegan Slow Cooker that salt-soaking improves the resulting beans. Add 2 T of salt to 4 quarts of water for overnight soaking, or 2 T of salt to 2 quarts of boiling water for the quick, one-hour, method.  (For the one-hour method, move the pot of salted water and beans off the flame for the hour.) Of course, you need to rinse and sort the beans before soaking them, and with the salt-soaking method, you need to rinse the salt off following the soaking—else the beans will cook up tough!

Lentils and split peas do not need to be soaked, unless the soup or other recipe that you are following specifically requires soaking.

White kidney beans or cannellini beans need to be boiled hard for five minutes before placing them in the slow cooker; ditto red kidney beans. Else they emit a toxin! The cannellini beans have the most neutral taste of all beans, hence are desirable in many recipes and are thus more expensive than most beans.

Personally, I find garbanzo beans/chickpeas/ceci to be the most versatile. And I love black beans in salads—and you know how good they are in Tex-Mex dishes when you don’t want pinto beans! Those latter tend to be the cheapest bean.

I also like to have in the house green split peas and red lentils. The former adds color to a dish that would be muddy with yellow split peas. The latter cook to the same bland color as any other lentil, but I find their texture preferable.

All of that said, even canned beans are cheaper gram of protein for gram of protein than just about any other source. So, if you can’t find the time to soak and cook beans—well, don’t forget the canned variety! (Just be sure to drain them and then rinse them thoroughly with cold water—and rinse again. The process will help to rid them of the “canned” taste.)