sorry iv been slacking

so here are a few

dennys style

ramen + curry powder + vegetables





jerk chicken david made

http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/16/lunchcommunicator-films-your-every-single-bite-saves-relationsh/

TORELLINI SALAD

This is less of a typical tortellini salad, where the pasta is the main focus, and more of a big, awesome salad that has tortellinis too. In my family, this has always been a go-to summer meal; its refreshing, cool, healthy and you can eat a lot of it. It is also easy to make a big batch, keep it in the fridge, and have it on demand when you don't feel like cooking. If you live in or around New York City, get tortellinis at Piemonte in Little Italy. As far as I'm concerned, they have the best purchasable pasta in NYC. My favorites are the spinach pasta ones with spinach-cheese filling, but they have tons of amazing options. Anyway, back to the salad.

The thing that always made this salad distinctive to me was the fact that my mother lightly cooked some of the veggies first, softening them a little, so they blended with the rest of the ingredients. I used broccoli, carrots and fresh green beans, and steamed them until the colors got really bright. If you overcook the vegetables, they get much less fun. You still want to have a little crunch and character to set them apart from the other ingredients.

 

Steam That (not the tomatoes)

After that, everything is simple. Cook the tortellinis til they are chewy and delicious, mix everything together. I added some sliced cherry tomatoes and little shreds of fresh mozzarella I had lying around, but you can really do whatever. Another key in this salad is dressing: make your own. Good, simple salad dressing is really easy to make. Any combination of balsamic, wine (red or white) or even regular white vinegar, a little mustard (definitely not the yellow stuff), olive oil, and some minced garlic will wind up delicious if you get the proportions right. Start small and add ingredients slowly so you know what's going on and taste frequently. Salt and sugar according to how sweet or salty you want things. Herbs, honey, Tabasco, mayo, or whatever else you can think of all make good additions once you know what you're doing and want to direct the flavor more. For tortellini salad, I like to go basic. If you don't want your dressing to be too strong or too oily, you can cut it with a little water too (don't substitute water for oil, though, use a little of both). Shake and apply!

There it is.

Its hard to see all the awesome stuff in the pictures because its tossed, but every bite should have a bunch of yummy things in it.

BUFFALO TOFU WRAP !!!!

 creamy feta dressing

buffalo tofu strips

(a little extra hot sauce)

iceberg

that tortilla

I didn't feel like going to the store for chicken, so I used the tofu that was already in the fridge. It worked out really well, I just fried the strips til they were nice and crispy on the outside, and then threw 'em in the sauce. Buffalo sauce is just about the easiest thing in the world to make: it's literally just Frank's plus butter. Nuke it for a few seconds to melt the butter, mix it up and that's it. I was kinda going for that McDonald's snack wrap steez with the iceberg in the tortilla: it worked. All in all, a resounding success. Make one.

DOUBLE DECKER EGG SANDWICH

bread

hot sauce

lettuce

cheddar

sunny side up egg
tomato

mayo

bread

hot sauce

lettuce

cheddar

sunny side up egg
tomato

mayo

bread


....plus tots

In any sandwich that has both tomato and mayo (burgers excepted), I always put the tomato directly on the mayo. This little trick exponentializes how delicious the sandwich is: when tomato juice and mayo mix, heaven is created. A prime example of this is the BLT (one of the purest incarnations of the sandwich, as far as I'm concerned):

bread
lettuce
bacon
tomato
mayo
bread

This makes for a perfect sandwich every time, assuming your ingredients are good. It's structurally sound, too: the bacon between the lettuce and the tomato provides enough friction to keep things from slipping out the sides too much when you sink your teeth in. Unfortunately, this wasn't the case with my double-decker above, those cheesy, runny-yolked eggs are slippery devils.

le BLT