Kitchen Adventures: From TV To Table

I spent a lot of my non-working time during CAT duty watching TV. Since the hotel had neither HBO nor Versus (hockey play-offs), I mainly switched back and forth between Showtime and The Food Network. There is nothing like eating boxed sandwiches and fast food for 3 weeks straight to make you yearn for REAL food.

One afternoon I was tuned in to "The Barefoot Contessa", watching Ina Garten make a beautiful pasta salad with several of my favorite ingredients, and I resolved to look up the recipe and try it some time this summer. Who doesn't love a nice pasta salad for a casual meal outside?

Normally, I would find the recipe, save it in a folder in my computer and never get back to it. But one of my resolutions for this summer is to actually cook more and not have the majority of my meals come from a microwave. So I looked up the recipe online and decided to make it for the weekend so I had something nice to munch on that I could spread out over several days.

And since nothing says summer like a nicely chilled Riesling, I chucked a bottle of Chateau Ste. Michelle in the shopping cart to go along with my meal.

After the wine had ample time to chill, I poured myself a glass, started up Sideways on the DVD player (my favorite movie to cook by!) and assembled the fixings for Ina's Tomato Feta Pasta Salad.

The recipe is very simple, with an incredible flavor that comes mostly from the dressing, a mixture of olive oil, red wine vinegar, garlic, capers and sun-dried tomatoes. And you get to make the dressing in a food processor, one of the simple joys of cooking (at least for me).

Before processing....

...and After Processing!

After the pasta cooks and you chop the other ingredients, you toss the whole shebang together and it has everything most pasta salads don't -- terrific color, pleasing texture and great flavor!

Voila!

What are you eating this weekend?