Tri Color'd Pasta and cold asparagus

Tri colored pasta is pasta that has dried spinach and tomato and stuff in it. I bought some that the red kind was actually beet flavored, which was not delicious by itself. However, in my super tasty "Clean out the fridge again!" recipe, it was quite good.

I personally don't like vinaigrette dressed pasta salad. It always seems too sharp with too many cold, squidgy bits. I'm also the kind of person who likes to chew, and find over cooked pasta pretty unappealing. I mean, it's to the tooth, not to the gum, right?

Anyway, I made a pasta salad with grilled, then cubed chicken breast, steamed asparagus, fresh cabbage (so sweet and crunchy!) good old mayo. I think maybe there was some garlic mashed in there somewhere. Probably.

Another reason for dressing my salad in mayonnaise is that homemade mayo is only good for a week, and I kind of freaked out about using it up. I actually ended up using the cup and a half I had left in this, but it was a fair amount of salad, so it was simultaneously quickly used up and spread out in portions.

I like making food on the fly. There's a satisfaction in me knowing that given a few basic ingredients I can have all sorts of stuff. It's a delicious satisfaction.

See, given half a chance I'll go all sorts of preachy on the sanctity of food. The meal is the gathering place. The food is prepared for you to go inside of you. It becomes what you are and you become what it was. Hell, do you know that nutritionists don't even say that U.S. citizens have meals anymore? There are "eating encounters". or some phrase like that, I already lent my book away so I can't reference it. But it's still true! Meal time is when you should be with other humans, communing in the most basic parts of life, not shoving burgers in your face at 60 mph.

Anyways, I'm trying to take back what's mine. I'm becoming priestess in my own temple and conducting my own delicious rites.

Well, another basic human feature (sleep) is calling, so I'm signing off. Do you have regular meals with other people? What is your take on American food fads and the lack of a traditional food culture?

The Almost Daily Sarah