This is not your ordinary, Tuesday night pasta salad! It’s a little extra trouble, but it’s worth it! This is a variation of a recipe from my favorite blogger, Ree Drummond, The Pioneer Woman (the girls call me a Junior Pioneer Woman and good grief, they may be right-I even bought the mascara she recommended on her blog last week! BTW, it is excellent!). I changed the ingredients to include some of my favorites and added the pepperoni to make it a heartier salad. Try it, you’ll like it!

Party Pasta Salad

Print recipe

• Print with main photo
• Print text only

Ingredients

• 8oz Corkscrew Pasta
• 1/3 cup Prepared Pesto (I used Butoni in refrigerated Dairy Dept)
• 1/2 cup Parmesan Cheese (shredded)
• 1/2 cup Mayonnaise
• 1/2 cup Sour Cream
• 1/2 teaspoon Salt
• 1/2 teaspoon Black Pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon Garlic Powder
• 1/4 cup Milk (to thin dressing as needed)
• 1 head Romaine Lettuce (or 2 Hearts of Romaine-chopped into 1 inch slices)
• 1/2 cup Kalamata Olives (or black olives- halved)
• 4oz Fresh Mozzarella Cheese (cut into 1/2 inch cubes)
• 1 jar Artichoke Hearts-marinated (6 oz jar, halved)
• 1 stick Pepperoni (cut into 1/2 inch cubes)
• 1 cup Grape Tomatoes (halved)
• 1/2 cup Parmesan Cheese (shredded, for sprinkling on top)
• 4 tablespoons Pine Nuts (toasted, optional)

Directions

Step 1

Cook the pasta according to package instructions. Then drain it and rinse in cold water. Allow pasta to dry slightly, then toss in a bowl with 4 tablespoons pesto. Add Parmesan and toss. Cover and refrigerate pasta until cold.

Step 2

Make the dressing by whisking together the mayonnaise, sour cream, and milk with the rest of the pesto. Add salt, pepper and garlic powder, mixing well.

Step 3

Toast the pine nuts over medium-low heat in a small skillet until they brown slightly. Set aside.

Step 4

To assemble the salad, make a bed of lettuce in a large, shallow bowl, then add pesto-coated pasta. Add vegetables, mozzarella and pepperoni chunks. Spoon a good amount of dressing all over the top. Serve extra on the side.

Step 5

Sprinkle salad with pine nuts and a little extra Parmesan (or serve both on the side) and serve.

We  are lucky enough to live, a good part of the time, at a tourist destination, Lake of the Ozarks, and we often have people ask us for recommendations about where to eat and what to do when they visit. We aren’t much help on recommending good fishing holes, hot spots for dancing or the best jogging trails, but we CAN tell you where we like to eat (and some in our family can tell you a lot about the golf courses! That someone isn’t me!) Here are a few of our favorite restaurants:

Best all around: The winner of the “most popular” award in our family – Ruthie D’s. Nice atmosphere-whether in the bar for appetizers (in the winter they have a great fireplace and in the summer lots of TVs to watch the Cardinal games) or in the main dining rooms with a sweet view of the lake. Nice staff and good service. AND, excellent food!  Their onion strings, grouper bites, seared tuna and chicken strips are all terrific appetizers (get their before 6 and enjoy Happy Hour prices).  They have a yummy chicken picatta, chicken marsala, great burgers and a couple of pasta dishes that look delicious. Oh, wait, I forgot the best part of the meal (at least for Sales Guy, SIL #1 and Sales Guy’s Lake Sis) – the side salad! What the heck? That’s right- the side salad! They include a couple of tasty pickled beets in their fresh, crunchy salad! A definite hit with some of our family. Our favorite spot!

Best Italian: Lil Rizzos (the one on HH – for some reason, the one at the Outlet Mall doesn’t live up to its sister restaurant).  Nice Italian salad, nice little warm rolls, good pasta entrees and an amazing chicken speidini! Delicious! Daughter #1 likes the spinach dip appetizer.

Best Pizza: J J Twigs. They serve an all meat pizza called “Ozark Meat Fest” that is awesome! We laugh about SIL #1 who once “dreamed about” the J J Twigs pizza. You get a basket of peanuts in the shell to snack on when you are seated. It’s kind of an odd décor, rustic with an odd mixture of stuffed animals and old tricycles, signs and farm implements. Service is sometimes slow and their lunch buffet is just ok. Stick to an Ozark Meat Fest pizza you can dream about!

Best Pizza Buffet: Imo’s. It’s not a huge buffet, but it has a variety of pizza, good salad ingredients, fried raviolis and yummy little dessert breadsticks. If you don’t like thin pizza, you won’t like Imo’s but if you like bacon, their bacon pizza is the best!

Best Wings: Ok, this is a weird one! Who goes to a Mexican restaurant for wings? We do! Vista Grande has delicious wings! Spicy and crunchy, sauce clears your sinuses, delicious! Their chips and queso are very tasty and for lunch they have a grilled chicken, rice and salad dish that is just perfect (pollo lago is what it is called). My MIL loves their seafood chimis and Daughter 1 likes their quesadillas. Good food, great service!

Best Barbecue: Hands down, it’s Half Sauced BBQ and now that Mizzou is no longer in the Big XII conference, it is easier to overlook their KU roots! Sales Guy can only wish that I could make brisket like they do! Nice bark, tender, terrific! I have to order their smoked turkey every time we go there because it is so much better than anywhere else! The Pit Beans are great and the rest of the other sides are average but the meats are so superior and servings are so large, you won’t have room for the sides anyway.

Best Steak: There are several upscale steak restaurants at the lake, but our favorite is J Bruners. Their filet is outstanding and fellow diners say their rib eye is as well. Start out with some amazing onion rings, have their wedge salad (share it-it is truly a quarter of a lettuce head, plus toppings!), splurge on a steak and add a couple of fried shrimp-they are delicious too. Sales Guy recently had the lobster bisque and he gave it a thumbs up. Great service!

Best Frozen Custard: Absolutely, Randy’s Custard! Creamy, sweet and delicious. They have a huge selection of sundaes, concretes and shakes. Try a Turtle Sundae: frozen custard topped with caramel and chocolate sauce, topped with around 100 toasted pecans (more or less…) and a maraschino cherry. Just yum. Nothing else to say.

Best Gyro: Arris Pizza. They have a Gyro sandwich and a Gyro salad and Sales Guy loves both of them. They have a good pizza buffet at lunch too.

Best Potato Soup: Baxters. It is delicious! Thick, creamy, cheesy, bacon-ny. They have a wide variety of very good entrees and they serve a 1 to 2 pound baked potato ala carte! Huge!

Best View: J B Hooks. You overlook at least 10 miles of lake, a golf course, gorgeous mega-houses and the bridge to the West side of the lake. The food is good – and the view is definitely a winner!

Best Crab Cake: Shorty Pants. How is that for a restaurant name? I’m not asking! They have a crab cake app that is amazing! It is a fun indoor/outdoor restaurant on the lake with an industrial décor and they specialize in Cajun food. Lots of good (different) choices, but go with the crab cakes!!

Best Frou Frou Sandwich Shop (you know what I mean): On the Rise Bistro. They serve breakfast (can’t vouch for that) and lunch. They have a tasty club sandwich and some soups that are very nice, but what I go back for is the homemade black pepper potato chips. DE-LI-CIOUS…They also have a bakery (can’t vouch for that either). It’s a dining experience, so don’t go there in a hurry!

That is a quick synopsis of our favorites. We rarely eat breakfast out, so I can’t recommend any of the large number of breakfast restaurants at the lake. I also don’t eat desserts much, I’m too full when I get to dessert time, so I didn’t help much there. We have lots of chain restaurants in the area too, but I didn’t include them as they should be pretty much the same everywhere. Nearly all of the lake area restaurants are open year round, which is a change in the last ten years, however some are closed on Monday or Tuesday each week.

There are lots of great dining options – a week in the Ozarks is a guaranteed 5 pound weight gain, but it’s a lot of fun getting there! Enjoy!

Although spring officially started on March 21^st, we have had snow flurries as recently as last week (that’s here in eastern Missouri-western MO had much more than flurries!)!  Nasty!  So of course I have no flowers planted and my teeny-tiny garden was still empty (well both of my teeny-tiny gardens were empty except for some lovely asparagus spears in the middle of a weedy patch in one of them).

With three days in a row of sunshine, on Wednesday I decided it was finally time! I went out and bought some flowers, vegetable plants and onion bulbs and got started!  My herb garden is my favorite part of the garden (probably because it is really the only successful part) so I started there.  I was lucky that I had some parsley, cilantro, chives and thyme make it through the winter (and not so lucky that the running-rampant oregano also survived. It is a big, beautiful, fragrant bush, but the herb is so strong that more than half a teaspoon in any recipe dominates the whole dish. It is just such a healthy and pretty  plant that I can’t bear to dig it up, so each year, it takes over more of the garden and I hack it back and it grows some more.  Anyone who wants some oregano, please, come cut some anytime!)

Today, I planted more parsley, chives and thyme. I planted lots of basil (not including the basil I planted inside in little peat pots over two months ago, the stems of which I could still thread through the eye of an embroidery needle! We have a wonderful greenhouse here in town-I’m going to let them plant those seeds in the future!). I also planted some rosemary, a new one for me, but I have a roast beef recipe that calls for rosemary and the result is the most wonderful smelling (and tasting) gravy, ever!

All of the little plants smelled so good, I can’t wait for them to take hold so I can start using them!

Here are some of the dishes I use these herbs in:

Chives: I love chives with potatoes-baked potatoes, potato soup, mashed potato casseroles. Yum! They are more mild than regular or green onions, so I use them whenever I think other onions might be too strong and they also add a pretty bright green color. Chives are great in risottos, in addition to the white onions most recipes call for, with steamed carrots, in frittatas and in dips.

Basil: As chives are to potatoes, basil is to tomatoes I add basil to red Italian sauces, and soups that contain tomatoes.  I love a basil-based pesto, with toasted nuts, delicious! Plus you get to “chiffonade” basil and that word is such a cool cooking term! (basically roll the leaves up and cut them into little strips).

Thyme: The go-to herb for poultry (along with sage, but it’s not one of my favorites-it’s fuzzy, like it’s the peach of the herb world – not an appealing texture to me). Anyway, stuff a brined chicken with lemons, onions, thyme and rosemary prior to roasting. Oh my, the chicken is flavorful and the gravy (strained) is delicious!

Rosemary:  It is a strong herb that goes well in meat dishes. Roast chicken (see above in thyme paragraph) and roast beef are good with rosemary. Rosemary isn’t pleasant to eat (kind of crunchy and tough), so I always strain meat juices and discard the rosemary leaves before making gravy.

Parsley: The list of dishes you can’t use parsley in is shorter than those you should use it in! Parsley is a mild herb that I usually add near the end of cooking as it doesn’t stand up to long heat. Potatoes, risotto, soups, salads, tomato sauces and salad dressings all are tasty with the addition of parsley.

Cilantro:  Ole! The herb used in many Mexican recipes. I love it in pico de gallo, guacamole, chicken tortilla soup and marinades. My problem growing cilantro is that it matures quickly, way before my tomatoes, peppers and onions are ready and by the time I’m ready to make salsa, I’m running to the store to buy cilantro. I might try planting some cilantro seeds this year as well as the plants from the nursery. Thanks for helping me think this through!

Note:  We have had two days of rain since I started writing this post and my poor tomato plants are still sitting in their little plastic pots, looking enviously at their pepper friends who did get planted before the deluge. Maybe it will clear up over the weekend???

We had a lot of fun with Cookbook Guy, his beautiful, sweet wife and really nice kids (who put up with a lot of crap from Cookbook Guy and his old pal, Sales Guy) this past week in their lovely new condo on the Florida beach (and awesome house near Orlando. They have the most gorgeous, lush landscaping that would never come close to surviving the cold, dreary Missouri winters. Beautiful! I’m jealous!). The Sunshine State didn’t completely live up to its billing since it rained part of the time we spent there, but, hey, it was 30 degrees warmer than the Midwest and we had enough sun that I got sunburned for the first time since high school!  A great time!

Let me explain the name “Cookbook Guy”. Sales Guy’s oldest friend owns a book distributing company and he knows I love to cook, so he recently sent me a wonderful surprise-a box full of sample cookbooks! Around 20 of them! What a gift to a person who reads cookbooks like, well, you know, books! And this week, he sent me home with a few more! The suitcases were not overweight, unlike the suitcase owners after nearly a week of eating delicious Florida food! So, if I don’t take the time to write over the next few weeks, you know I am busy perusing my cookbooks!

Anyway, no new recipe posts this week as I didn’t cook so much as a cup of tea from Sunday noon until tonight! Except Shrimp Night, but more about that later!

I thought I would give a quick rundown of the best foods we had on our mini-vacation and where you can find it, should you ever go to the Orlando & Daytona Beach area. It was all great!

Best crab cakes (and I, along with one of my besties- Shelley and Daughters 1 & 2, are crab cake experts!) – Malibu Grill, Port Orange FL. I had them at 3 different restaurants on our trip (and every day on our short trip to California a couple of weeks ago-keep in mind, we are land-locked in Missouri and I love seafood) and these were hands-down, the best!  Crabby, with not too much filler, but with a little spice and the mustard based sauce was tangy and delicious. I usually like a remoulade sauce with crab cakes, but this was different and yummy.

Best coconut shrimp – D J’s Deck, Port Orange FL. The shrimp were big and crunchy and the sauce was almost like a grape jelly, melted. The combination was awesome! Best coconut shrimp, not only of the trip, but probably that I’ve ever eaten! It was an outdoor restaurant, with picnic tables along the dock on the inlet where fishing boats come in. Fun atmosphere and super clean. Plus, great coconut shrimp!

Best breakfast – The Cracked Egg, Daytona Beach Shores, FL. Big omelets, some messy concoction with biscuits, sausage gravy, scrambled eggs and country-fried potatoes all piled up. I stuck with my go-to breakfast, sausage and potatoes, but my three fellow diners said it was all excellent.

Best brisket – Four Rivers Smokehouse, Longwood, FL. It was lean, smokey, delicious!! It rivals our favorite barbecue restaurant in Missouri, Half Sauced BBQ, in Osage Beach.

Best Slaw – Cole slaw can be dry or so soupy and runny that you need to drain it or eat it with a spoon.  D.J.’s Deck wins its second category of the competition! It was not too dry, not too runny. Goldilocks, it was just the right consistency and very tasty.

Best Salad – Aunt Catfish’s on the River, Port Orange, FL. Actually, best salad bar. It’s huge and has some unusual things. Lots of fresh vegetables to add to your lettuce mixes, and also things like pepperoncini, which is always a hit with us and pickled beets which are a hit with Sales Guy. They had interesting salad toppers (I said interesting-not healthy) – those little canned French fried potato sticks I hadn’t seen in years, a crunchy mixture of different little cracker-type things, including wasabi peas and chow mein noodles. They also have a small hot bar with baked beans, grits, corn bread (and cole slaw that came in third. Sorry, Aunt Catfish).  Interesting place. Touristy, but fun!

Best Hush Puppies – D.J.’s Deck wins again! A little jalapeno, a lot of taste!

Best Fried Shrimp & Best Boiled Shrimp – Home cooked by all of us!  Our family has a tradition that whenever we go to Florida (we have taken the kids to the Florida panhandle 6 or 8 times over the years where we rent a condo on the beach-it’s a fun, relaxing trip) we go to a seafood market and buy a few pounds of raw shrimp and fry some and boil the rest and just pig out on it. No veggies, no salad, no bread, just shrimp (well, maybe hushpuppies or cheese and crackers too…) Even though our kids weren’t with us, we decided to keep the tradition alive and it was yummy. Sales Guy is still complaining about the taste of the brand of cocktail sauce he bought, but I say it was better than any shrimp we had in a restaurant (well, except for that delicious coconut shrimp!) the whole trip.

Now back to the real world! Steak, potatoes, salad and Aunt Louise’s chocolate chip cookies tonight.

Thanks so much, Florida friends, for a wonderful, delicious week!