My girlie’s got a bug and she’d like some macaroni salad.  And you know, when they don’t feel good, we want them to eat what they feel like eating.

The store where we picked up meds only had versions of macaroni salad with milk and/or cheese.   But that’s ok, allergy-free mac salad is easy.

This morning, I chopped some peppers from the farmer’s market.

Half of the orange one.

Half of the red.  And half of the green.  And a bit of celery.

 

Gooey Peppers – Not This Time

I don’t like storing cut peppers because I forget they are there.  You know the rest of that gooey story. 

So I sliced the leftover halves, covered the bowl and set it in the refrigerator for tonight’s dinner.

Back to the Mac

I boiled the macaroni (dairy-free, egg-free).  And then I took this picture for you.

Can you tell it was still hot?

 

 

I tried the pic again.  I rather like it.  All steamy like that.

 

Mac and Dress

After draining the pasta, I added a squeeze of Italian dressing while the mac was still quite warm.  Something scientific about heat opening the pasta pores and soaking in the flavor.

 

 

Then I added chopped carrots.  Yep, while the mac was still hot.  It doesn’t really cook the carrots, but it lovingly takes out some of the ow-what’s-that-in-my-salad-oh-it’s-a-carrot moments.

 

 

And Then There Was Chicken

While the mac and carrots were cooling, I popped a whole bag of frozen chicken tenderloins in the slow cooker with a little less than a cup of water.

If you’d like the exact water measurement, it was:

       Two nearly-fulls of a small old-fashioned plastic light green bowl.

Does that help? 

I like my little bowl and I like my slow cooker and I like cooking ahead.  Didn’t ever think much about using all my likes together until Tricia from HodgePodge recently reminded me about slow cooker batch cooking.

Thank you, Tricia, for making dinner easy tonight.  (And easy the next chicken night, and the next chicken night …) 

I tapped onto the frozen chicken a hefty sprinkle or three of garlic powder, a wee bit of ground black pepper and a handful of dried chives from Penzey’s.

I tossed the not quite cooled pasta with the chopped veggies added a few more squeezes of dressing, and popped it into the refrig for later.

Tonight I will pull out a few pieces of chicken from the slow cooker – freezing the rest – and will stir them up in a lightly oiled pan with the sliced peppers.

To round it all out, I’ll add a side of Five Minute a Day Bread and some strawberries picked the same day as the peppers.  Well, picked in the sense of picked up at the farmer’s market.  

 

Happy Mac and Peppering!