New Take On Pasta Salad

We all know pasta salad can be very basic or very complex. I typically prefer mine to be relatively simple, mostly due to my lack of ingredients. This was something I thought of when I saw a recipe in the Better Homes & Garden Cookbook.

You’ll need:

Pasta (Whatever your favorite style is)
Mayo
Pickles or Relish
Fried Onions
Parmesan Cheese

How to:

Get your pasta boiling and cooked. While it’s going, if you have pickles, dice them up. If you’re using relish, you can mix it with your mayo if you know how much you’re going to use. Once the pasta’s done, use enough mayo to coat your noodles and toss in your pickles to be mixed with it. If you’re using the relish and didn’t already mix it with your mayo, mix it in now. If you happen to have fried onions around, you can throw some in as well. Sprinkle Parmesan cheese on top, mix well, and you’re ready to enjoy!

Sometimes it takes looking at a recipe to realize you have other things you can throw in to add variety that would never have hit you otherwise.

Made 8-16-2010. You can see bits of pickle and fried onion in with the pasta.

Parmesan-Dijon Chicken

• ¼ cup butter, melted
• 2 tbs. Dijon mustard
• ¾ cup dry bread crumbs
• ¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 6 boneless skinless chicken breast halves (1 ¾ pounds)
• Try egg for flour to stick

1. Heat oven to 375 degrees. Mix butter, honey, and mustard in shallow dish until well mixed. Mix bread crumbs and cheese in large plastic bag.

2. Dip one piece of chicken at a time into butter mixture, coating all sides. Then place in bag of bread crumbs, seal bag and shake to coat with crumb mixture. Place chicken in single layer in ungreased rectangular pan, 13x9in.

3. Bake uncovered 20-30 minutes, turning once, until juice of chicken is no longer pink when centers of thickest pieces are cut.

I haven’t perfected making it look pretty yet, but I have also never had bread crumbs available so they may work better than flour. You can also vary it a bit by adding any sauce instead of the mustard. I’ve tried it with a Cajun garlic sauce and it was just as good. I’m still experimenting with other sauces so feel free to try your own.

Parmesan Dijon Chicken Fingers