Easy Penne Pasta Salad

I had completely forgotten about the existence of pasta salads until I spent some time with my sister this past spring and she made one to have on hand for easy work lunches. Needless to say the flame of this old love was rekindled, and the recipe below is the child of that love! (Oh dear...) The keeper recipe I've finally settled on is mostly drawn from Taste of Home and A Southern Soul, but with tweaks to fit my own tastes better. It's not the most exciting dish, but when I'm craving a lot of veggies and needing something that'll fill me up it fits the bill quite nicely! I hope you enjoy it as much as I have this summer!

Manchurian Kung Pao Chicken

When I moved to northeastern China I quickly discovered that as a foreigner I was supposed to really like kung pao chicken (宮保雞丁 / gōngbǎo jīdīng in Mandarin), which was news to me as I couldn't even remember if I'd had it before! I grew up with Cantonese food and stereotypically Chinese-American food, but we moved enough during my childhood that I really couldn't say whether or not kung pao chicken made an appearance on my plate when we were in North America and Hong Kong - if it did it certainly didn't stand out. Despite all this I caved to the pressure to try the kung pao chicken in Manchuria and was a little embarrassed to realize I did indeed really like kung pao chicken!

Cucumber Salad with Gochugaru

This is a simple, delicious Korean recipe for oi muchim taken almost entirely from this site. My only adaptations were to add some garlic (because of course!) and substitute some Chinese black vinegar for the rice vinegar called for. What results is a beautiful side dish, especially for a hot summer or early fall day!

Cucumber Rice

Sometime last summer I was slicing cucumbers up to have for lunch with a little salt and pepper when I realized that they would probably be fantastic over rice with a bit of olive oil! I later discovered a local dish that took it to the next level by including crushed garlic. (I am usually the one throwing extra cloves of garlic into dishes I'm trying out, so why I didn't think of it on my own I do not know!) All in all a quick, easy, and lovely recipe, no cooking required! (If you can buy your cooked rice from a restaurant in your apartment building anyways! If not, then not so much...)