Someone from work invited me to their annual Memorial Day potluck cookout. I volunteered Tony to make his tortellini salad, which I do whenever we get invited to a potluck. They have a beautiful place on a few acres with a built-in pool and lots of grassy areas for badminton, Frisbee, and other lawn games. Their neighbor has some retired race horses that we fed bags of organic! carrots. They don’t actually buy organic carrots for the horses, but they bought them and didn’t eat them all soon enough.
Somehow the hostess and I got on the topic of shredded cheese (yeah, kind of odd) and she said she heard not to buy it because of the added mold inhibitor. I had never noticed that before; some things you think you’re safe not reading the ingredients but you’re wrong. I checked when we got home and there is a mold inhibitor and an anti-caking agent. I don’t mind shredding our own block of cheese, i.e. delegating the shredding of cheese to someone else in the family.
Here is a great potluck contribution if you’re tired of taking brownies – this is a double batch so you can cut it in half for the family.
Tortellini Salad
2 packages of cheese tortellini
1 large (24 oz) bottle of Italian dressing – you use about ¾ of it
½ C parmesan cheese
1 C mozzarella
2 t garlic powder
1 pkg Open Nature prosciutto
2 T fresh chopped basil
The night before, make the tortellini according to package instructions. Run some cold water over it in the colander to cool it off. Put it in a bowl with half the salad dressing and ¼ cup of the parmesan cheese and the mozzarella and put it in the frig. The next morning add the garlic powder, tear the prosciutto into little pieces and add it along with the basil and stir well. Refrigerate again until you need it.
