Easy Macaroni Salad

So my faithfulness to glomming Tastespotting in my reader led me to this post here, BLT Macaroni Salad. It looked really good and I had all the ingredients on hand. But of course I had to change it up a bit.

Cooked elbow macaroni, chopped tomato, cooked bacon pieces and fresh from our garden green onions.

Since there is only the 5 of us I used a half pound of pasta, two smallish tomatoes, half a pound of bacon and about 6 green onions.

Here's where I made a big change to the original recipe: mayo (1/2 cup), red wine vinegar (a good tbsp.) salt and pepper.

I have a thing for red wine vinegar and it just has more flavor to me than plain white.

Mix your dressing up in a large bowl and add the other stuff, you can save some onions to make it look pretty or try to hide them in the sauce to get the kids to eat them without the "what's the green things" whine that I listen to.

Stir it all together and you're done.

This makes a great macaroni salad for people who don't like a lot of weird and or unidentifiable ingredients in theirs. We've had it with panko coated baken chicken and ribs and it was great with both.

Recipe:
For 5 with a bit leftover
1/2 lb cooked elbow macaroni
1/2 lb cooked and crumbled bacon
2 smallish or 1 medium tomato
1/2 bunch green onions
1/2 cup real mayo
1 to 1 1/2 tbsp. red wine vinegar
salt and pepper to taste

Mix everything together and serve or chill until ready to serve.

Baked Beans

So here are the baked beans we have at BBQs and picnics and just whenever the mood strikes.

Stuff: Canned Pork n Beans, whatever brand you like or is on sale, those 2 big cans are enough to feed say 8 normal adults or 3 of my uncles, BBQ sauce this is actually kinda optional, if I have it I use it but I don't go to the store for it, ketchup, mustard, brown sugar, pancake(maple) syrup, another I don't run to the store for thing, onion powder, garlic powder, and chili powder, and the will run to the store for thing...bacon.


First, open the cans of beans and dump them into a strainer or colander, you want to rinse all that "tomato sauce" they come in off. Then dump the beans into a bowl and then start adding the other stuff (no bacon yet). This recipe really does not have measurements, you have to taste the sauce and make sure it's right, just a nice balance of all the flavors.

I usually put about 3 squirts of ketchup then maybe 2 of mustard and one of bbq sauce. Syrup gets a good squirt and then 2-3 big tablespoons of brown sugar. The onion and garlic get good healthy shakes and the chili powder depends on if I want to fight with my kids about it being too spicy.

Stir it all together and taste, see what you need more of or what you need to balance out, the mustard tends to get strong fast but a little more ketchup and sugar fix that. Oh yeah, heat the oven to 350.



Pour it into an oven safe dish, I think this one holds something like 1.5 quarts and smooth out the top with your spoon. Now for the good stuff.

Bacon. Ok so you can either use completely uncooked bacon, which I do if I'm feeding more than just a few, or you can use some cooked but not crispy bacon. This stuff was leftover from a recipe where I needed it half cooked in a skillet and half in the oven. Just lay it over the top there then pop it into the oven for 30-45 minutes.

You know it's done when the top just starts to look at little dry and the sugar around the edges of the pan gets crunchy(carmelized).

Ok so I was more worried about fixing plates and watching the ending of the superbowl then getting a pic of the finished beans. But this is what they look like when done, top is dry and crunchy, underneath is moist but not dripping like that "tomato sauce" was. You can have these with ribs, hamburgers, hot dogs, anything really. They have that nice bbq type flavor to them.