Maybe in another life.  For today, I’ll have to pacify myself by making My Favorite Greek Salad.  Probably not authentic, but close enough for me.  This salad is so very easy, but so very delicious, and perfect as a main course or appetizer size before a meal.

My Favorite Greek Salad

from Shortbread

serves 4-6

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• large pinch kosher salt
• freshly ground black pepper
• 10 cups romaine lettuce, chopped, washed and dried
• 1/4 medium red onion, thinly sliced
• 1/2 medium cucumber, chopped into large chunks
• 1/2 cup Kalamata olives
• 1 cup canned garbanzo beans, rinsed and drained
• 1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese
• 8-12 pepperoncini peppers

Directions

1. In a large salad bowl combine the olive oil, vinegar, oregano, salt, and pepper to taste.  Whisk with a fork or small whisk until combined.
2. Add remaining ingredients except pepperoncini peppers to the bowl and toss with hands or salad servers.
3. Divide salad between bowls and serve with peppers on the side. Top with additional black pepper, if desired.

PRINTER FRIENDLY RECIPE

Soon afterward, she began starring in her own show, frying chicken and baking cakes and cooking up all kinds of good Southern food.  I was so glad to see the food I grew up with being given the attention it deserved, in a time when, as Paula states, “health-food diet mania” was consuming America.

The rest is history, and Paula Deen is now a household name.  In her autobiography, It Ain’t All About the Cookin’, however, Paula proves that everybody seems normal until you get to know them.  I guess I just assumed that she was always a success, but she reveals in her book how she spent many years of her life just struggling to make it through the day.

Growing up in Georgia, Paula says she had an idyllic childhood, with her family, grandparents, aunts and uncles all close together running a resort.  Her teen years were spent being cute, having fun, and cheering.  But at eighteen she met a boy she couldn’t resist, and wanted nothing more than to get married and be a wife and mother.

Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for Paula to realize that marriage wasn’t all smooth sailing all the time, and she began struggling with the fact that she couldn’t make it all better.  As is often the case, I think, being sheltered and loved by her family, and possessing the gift of “Southern charm”, that niceness that girls in the South are brought up with, caused an inner struggle for Paula.  She felt that “if being protected and cherished by my parents was being spoiled, then I guess I was.”

Then as a result of tragically loosing both her parents within four years of each other, while Paula was still in her early twenties she really began to struggle to keep her sanity.  Suffering from panic attacks and agoraphobia while raising two small children tested her every day, until she finally discovered what exactly she suffered from and began to slowly overcome it,  and eventually end her marriage.

As a single mother Paula returned to what she knew best, good Southern food.  Beginning with a catering company and expanding to a full restaurant, she kept up the traditions of the South.  She knew that “the South is all about tradition, and most of those traditions have their origins in the cooking pots and the recipes we pass down from generation to generation” and that “Southern cooking is nothing but Southern – we don’t fly in our ingredients or menus from distant parts of the world. What’s in our pots and on our plates is all home-grown.”  And keeping true to this philosophy has meant nothing but success for Paula Deen.

This book is full of Southern charm and wit, and had me laughing one minute and crying the next.  If you are from the South, you’ll find yourself nodding along with it, and if you aren’t, you’ll hopefully learn a little about what drives a Southern woman.  As Paula says, “Some people call Southern women steel magnolias to show our unfailing survival instinct. Well, if we got dimples of steel, so what. Things have to be right.”

I whipped up this Ham Salad recipe found in Paula’s autobiography, and it turned out to be just right, too.

My Best Ham Salad (Sandwich)

adapted from It Ain’t All About the Cookin’ by Paula Deen

Ingredients

• 2 cups leftover ham, chopped in a food processor
• 1 cup celery, finely diced
• 1/4 cup sweet onion, finely minced
• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
• 2 hard-boiled eggs, diced
• 1/4 cup hot pickle relish, drained
• 1/2 cup mayonnaise

Directions

1. Mix all the ingredients until well blended.
2. Spread on white bread to make a sandwich, or serve with crackers.

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What a thrill.  This Pasta with Sun-Dried Tomatoes from Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa Family Style cookbook definitely shook things up in my kitchen.  I love a recipe that makes you say “Hmm, I never would have thought of using _____ that way.”

The thing that I found to be surprising is the use of capers blended into the pasta dressing.  I’ve added whole capers to dishes before, but have never seen or thought to process them in with other ingredients.  What fun.  The dressing is made by adding sun-dried tomatoes and capers to a vinaigrette mixture and processing it to make a very flavorful sauce for pasta, tomatoes, cheese, olives and basil.

I was also thrilled to find that this recipe is one that lends itself well to substitutions made out of certain necessities (e.g., forgetting your grocery list).  I used some short pasta from my pantry, re-constituted dry-packed sun-dried tomatoes, and substituted feta cheese for the mozzarella.  I adore fresh mozzarella, and will use it the next time I make this, but the feta cheese was delicious, too.

Thanks to Delta Whiskey and the Barefoot Bloggers, I discovered a new way to use yummy capers – a trick I will be sure to use in other recipes.  To make this pasta yourself, just click on Food Network for the recipe.