Kitchen Sink Pasta Salad

Yesterday, I was hungry. (Surprise!) At approximately the same time, I found out that while my kitchen is fully stocked to make any kind of cake or cookie imaginable, it is sorely lacking in the “real food” department.

In desperation, I turned to an old, familiar friend: pasta. Before college, pasta played a pretty significant role in my life, especially on random school days off. I would sleep until 1 or 2 pm, stumble out into the kitchen, peruse my food options, and then, without fail, make some pasta. My favorite dish (no judgment) was rotini under cream of chicken soup, with shredded sharp cheddar cheese melted on top.

Somewhere along the way, I started to love pasta salad – usually with tri-colored rotini, olives, ham, you know, the classic. Yesterday, though, when the pasta salad craving hit (hard), I had zero of the above ingredients. No rotini. No olives. No ham.

Thus, I improvised. And while this is called kitchen sink pasta salad, it should really probably be called “refrigerator” pasta salad . . . because everything from my refrigerator went right into the bowl. I was feeling way too lazy to search out herbs to make a real dressing, so I just put in rice vinegar, salt, pepper, and a little olive oil. It. was. delicious.

So, if you want some pasta salad and don’t have any of the “classic” ingredients or even any dried herbs for dressing, have no fear. Pasta salad is super adaptable. Just take any kind of pasta you have, all the veggies/meat in your fridge, and bam! Perfect pasta salad. I’ve posted two recipes below – one for the specific pasta I made, and a general recipe with proportions for any ingredients you want to use. Happy Fridge Cleanout Friday!

S’mores Rice Krispie Squares

You already know about my love of all things s’mores.

But here’s something I haven’t told you (for fear that you won’t be my friend anymore): I am a fiercely competitive individual. Once, when I was about eight years old, I convinced my opponent (and, yeah, I guess she was my friend) in Monopoly that I could build hotels on any of my properties without owning all three of the same color block. By the end, she owed me $8000. I know, despicable, right?

Don’t say anything yet. We haven’t even talked about one of my favorite games of all time: Taboo. I pretty much turn into a monster whenever I play this game. I am that girl. Yeah, the girl who is blaring out all these random words that don’t even relate to the description because she doesn’t trust anyone to describe the target word besides herself and is hoping one of these words she’s screaming out will somehow hit the mark. And then she swears profusely when she doesn’t get it right. Quite. Obnoxious.

Though, in my defense, my scream-out-every-possible-word strategy does often work. And, top secret tip: People always crack up when the target word is “bimbo.” Like, every single time. So, every time the person giving the hints starts laughing, I shout, “bimbo!” Pretty sure my success rate is at least 1%.

But, back to the whole competitive thing. Even though evidence points to the contrary, I’m not actually telling you incriminating stories about myself just for the sake of it. I’m actually building up to the fact that I developed this recipe for the “incredibly easy” category of the Dallas Morning News Holiday Cookie Contest! My awesome friend Alexa, who is from Dallas and thus, super in the know about these things, told me about the contest, and my competitive side immediately started rearing its ugly head.

Unfortunately, it found its enemy in my procrastinating self, and thus, I may or may not have started thinking about this recipe a couple of nights ago. Sooo I’m not getting my hopes up. I am, however, quite enjoying these bars. Graham cracker crust + marshmallowy rice krispies + melted chocolate = love.