Rainy Days and Sundays

Friday night was pretty miserable weather-wise but we had fun at the Quarry House Tavern, a place we used to go to regularly but have only been once since it came under new ownership in December. We were pleasantly surprised to find two of our favorites from the Corner Pub, Nicki and Nick, work at the QH now. With an updated jukebox, martinis, tater tots and the addition of some flat screen TV's, the QH may become our new old haunt.

Saturday wasn't much better with the rain. We went to a party in honor of Nicole's birthday. Always a good time there, regardless of the weather. Last September, Nic brought a tortellini salad (in a big square platter) to our wedding celebration picnic thrown by the GO7. Freddy took the platter home and kept trying to return it to me, despite my many reminders to him that it belonged to Nic. He brought it to New Year's and it's been in our possession ever since. Saturday was the perfect opportunity to FINALLY return this thing to Nic. She didn't remember where it went and had given up all hope it would ever make it's way home. She was very happy when we came to her party with her platter... filled with the following:

CELLOPHANE NOODLE SALAD

2-3 small packages cellophane noodles
1 cup chicken or pork
1 cup cooked shrimp, halved if large
½ cup julienned carrots
½ cup julienned celery
1/3 cup thinly sliced onion
½ cup chopped fresh cilantro

Dressing:
1/4 cup fish sauce
1/4 cup fresh squeezed lime juice
red pepper flakes or cayenne pepper or sweet red chili sauce (optional)

Poach meat in lightly salted water until done. Shred or cut into julienne strips.

Blanch cellophane noodles in boiling water for 3-4 minutes to soften. Rinse in cold water to cool and drain thoroughly.

In a small bowl, combine fish sauce, lime juice and red pepper/chili sauce (to taste) and set aside.

In a large bowl, lightly toss noodles, meat, shrimp, veggies and cilantro. Pour dressing mixture over noodles and combine thoroughly. Adjust lime juice, fish sauce and red pepper to taste. You can also add a touch of sugar if dressing seems too tart or salty.

Chill until served. Toss again right before serving and top with more cilantro leaves.

This is a very flexible recipe. All ingredients can be adjusted to your taste or what you have on hand. You can make this with all shrimp or just chicken, add more or less veggies -- whatever you like!

This is definitely one of my go-to recipes. As with many of my recipes, it's easy to make, but tedious in the prep. Lots of chopping and stuff. I bought carrots that were already shredded, which helped a lot. To tell you the truth about the salad ingredients... I NEVER MEASURE. So, coming up with the quantities was very difficult!!! As always, contact me if you need help with the ingredients or prep methods (or need an official taster).

Sunday was a total "lay around the house doing nothing" day for me. I managed to watch everything I had TiVo'd this week. Poor Johnny was on call and got one at 8:00 AM. Luckily, it was only down in College Park and not downtown or something. For dinner, I cooked up some chicken wings from the crock pot recipe guide but botched the recipe. They still came out tasty. It pays to read the recipe thoroughly before you begin to dump every ingredient into the crock pot! I think John liked their spare ribs recipe the best. I'll have to make those again.

Coming up this week: Haircut on Tuesday, Johnny's big 41 on Thursday and southern MD for the weekend.

Have a good one!