This pasta’s quick. This pasta’s easy. This pasta hits the spot.

It’s a pasta dish you can enjoy warm out of the pot, room temperature or chilled as leftovers for lunch the next day. It’s a mom’s answer to “what’s for dinner” on a long, summer day full of activity or a busy weeknight at the start of the school year.

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Jenny Flake of Picky-Palate is no stranger to culinary success.  She’s won a multitude of noteable recipe contests and was twice featured on the Food Network’s Ultimate Recipe Showdown.  After years of careful study, recipe research, and practice, she has honed a remarkable ability to combine everyday ingredients in new, unique, and tasty ways.  Take, for instance, one of her most recent cookie concoctions.  Three-ingredient Fluffernutter that are so simple to make, you are left wondering, “why didn’t I think of that?”  

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I was once a grill girl at Hooper Country Store.  I stood behind the meat counter, tucked behind shelves of Tab and Diet Rite soda, canvas bags of farm supplies, and the other sorts of random items a person might need when living in a city called Hooper.  Twangy country music incessantly droned from a small metal boom box by the fryer.  Dirt covered cowmen in dirt covered worksuits would find their way to the back of the store, shout for me to come and make them a burger or two, then lumber their thick bodies around the tiny chairs of the waiting area.  It all sounds rather unpleasant now, but I rather loved the feel of the place back then.  It was quaint and comfortable, filled with the deep conversations of hard working men taking well-deserved breaks.  It was where I learned to love myself some mean country music.  And, it was where I learned to make the meanest burger this side of the Mississipi.

The burgers made by a Hooper Country Store grill girl weren’t fancy.  They didn’t have high culinary add-in’s, or the glorious melding of fresh flavors.  What they did have was meat.  And {as Summer Criddle told me while smashing a half pound of meat into the burger press one day, then dowsing  the hamburger with an obscene amount of seasoning salt} they were big and tasted good.

As it turns out, that’s the very sort of burger most of the men in Hooper liked.  And, it’s the kind my hubby prefers.  Two weeks ago, after saying goodbye to some dinner guests, I turned and sighed, “that was the best grilled burger I have ever made in my life,” I said of my Thai Infused Sloppy Joes.  John shrugged his shoulders and crinkled his freckled nose, “I don’t know,” he said, “I like my burgers plain.

So, on behalf of men everywhere this Father’s Day, here is everything you need to know about making one heck of a plain-old, good, and tasty burger.  Filthy overalls not required.

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Most of our friends live quite a distance from where we live, which means that when we visit, we are often there longer than an hour or two.  When that happens, I sometimes like to volunteer to make dinner for us and their family.

It’s actually kind of fun to rummage through someone else’s fridge and find things I am not used to cooking with, or put things together in a way I had never thought of.

While I was watching my friend’s children the other day, she had almost two dozen free-range eggs in shades of blue, pink, and brown.  I found some bacon, and cheese, as well, and knew I could not pass up an opportunity to make some kind of breakfast food.  My immediate idea was to just whip up a quiche, but I’d done that too many times.

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