Pasta Puttanesca

I’ve been trying out a ton of new recipes this week and this was the last one on my menu for the week. Of all the recipes (other than the spinach salad mentioned in the previous post) this was by far the easiest and quickest meal I have made.

While I was able to find just about all of the ingredients at my local grocery store, the only thing I couldn’t find was anchovy paste and I didn’t want to mash up anchovies just to have the teaspoon needed. The next time I make this (and there will be a next time according to my husband who immediately said I needed to make it for others) I will make more of an effort in finding anchovy paste just to see what the ingredient adds to the dish – other than salt.

Speaking of salt. You really don’t need any. Between the olives and the capers the dish has plenty of salt. I salted the pasta water because I always do but I didn’t add any salt – or pepper for that matter – to the dish.

Spinach Salad with Warm Bacon and Apple Cider Dressing

So yesterday (Wednesday) I made individual pot pies and a spinach salad for my weekly get-together. While the chicken pot pies were good, it was the salad that everyone raved about. It’s a rare thing to hear an entire table say “Wow! This is amazing.” about a salad.

Most times I think of summer when I eat a salad, but the dressing on this one made me think of fall. It must be the apple cider…

It was surprisingly simple to make and very very tasty.

Fruity Chicken Salad

I don’t make chicken salad often – actually, I can’t say that. I’ve never made chicken salad before. Recently my darling husband mentioned that I should try to since he found out that he very much likes it. In the last two days I have made two different types of Chicken salad. The first one, which I will detail in this post, was a fruity type salad complete with almonds and grapes. It was surprisingly easy to make and very yummy. While my husband put the chicken salad on toasted Hoagie rolls, I made lettuce wraps with some butter lettuce leaves.    It feeds upwards of 6 people in my opinion so if you want to make less just cut the ingredients in half.

Fruity Chicken Salad