Asian-inspired Kitchen Sink Cold Noodle Salad

What to make for dinner when you don't home until 530pm?  This! If I was really on the ball, I'd have made it earlier in the day.  Because you can!

All you really need for this "anything goes" recipe is whole wheat thin spaghetti and a sauce you like.  I go with what I can get at BJ's Warehouse because that's what there is where I live right now. The sauce is an amazing Chili Teriyaki Sauce made by S & F from my old stomping grounds in Portland Maine.  Outstanding products, although this one might be made only for BJs as I do not see it on their website.  I suspect, and will have to find out in a few months when we move and I no longer have a BJs in the state, that you can get a similar taste using a sweet chili sauce and a teriyaki sauce (more chili than teriyaki, based on the color).

At any rate, pasta and sauce are the base and from there, the sky's the limit.  For tonight's dinner, I dug around in the refrigerator and came up with this:  carrots, red pepper, frozen peas, sliced almonds, green onions, and roasted chicken

not pictured, sliced almonds.  I need a crunch and that adds exactly the right amount without overwhelming the flavor

In other incarnations, I have added most of a bag of preshredded cole slaw mix and green pea  pods.  Don't like one of the vegetables?  Leave it out.  Have some zucchini cluttering up your counter top?  Shred it and toss it in!  Going vegetarian only tonight?  Skip the chicken and add more vegetables...or grill up some tofu.  Or...whatever.

Step 2:  enlist the services of a reluctant pasta-eating teenager.

Here it is, all chopped.  

Don't worry about the amounts.  Eyeball it.  If you are seeing too much pasta when you stir it together, add more of whatever you feel is missing.  For reference, I use about a third of a bottle of sauce.  Don't drown the noodles, just give them a reason to not stick together.

Be sure to rinse the pasta in cold water and shake all the water out before dumping it into a very very large bowl...for stirring purposes, you know

stir it all together and serve!

a pretty pickle

sliced thin, salted and about to be iced

At long last, I brave the true Bread and Butter Pickles (with onions!) from scratch, no cheater packet of spices.  Before breakfast, I sliced all 4lbs of them, with 2 lbs of red onions, and hit 'em up with salt and ice.  And there they sat, shedding excess water so they could make me up a crunchy little pickle.

rinsed and drained

add pickles to stuff I already boiled

It was a sticky but satisfying experience and I am the happy holder of 5 pints and 2 half pints of pickles.  And I still forgot to do the "let the air out" trick...one of these days, I'll remember that. At least these pickles are not floating!

Traditional Bread and Butter Pickles
The Ball Complete Book of Home Preservation

The branzini fish from the other night cooked up fabulously on the grill with some red onions and sliced lemon inside, salt and pepper and olive oil on the outside.  Nothing like the afternoon high Colorado winds to act as bellows for your charcoal grill.  The kids were not as impressed but that was ok as the fish itself did not yield as much filet as I'd have initially thought after my trout experiences.  The taste was somewhere between trout and mackerel, both of which are pictured below, losing their skin in my little Aussie grill.  All in all, I'd have it again.  The fact that the internet touts it as a "green fish" is just a bonus.  Thankfully, my fishmonger scales them all for me.