Memorial Day Dilemma

I was invited to a Memorial Day potlock with 4 hours notice. Normally that would be plenty of time to go to the grocery store (which was on my list of things to do anyway) and come up with something yummy to make. However, I opted instead to go on a bike ride.



So before I took my bike out, I was waiting for my mom to call me and thought I'd see if I could get started on something (plan B was to buy something, gasp!). I went to vegweb, my favorite for recipes, and checked out the potlucks and picnics category. I stumbled up the recipe for Three Bean Pasta Salad and did a quick inventory of food in my apartment. I thought I could pull something together.



I immediately cut up 4 cloves of garlic and smashed them into a paste, adding a little salt and olive oil to assist. I then let it marinate together in the fridge while I drained and washed a can each of black, garbanzo, and dark red kidney beans. I then decided to use up my baby carrots and carefully cut them up into thin strips. Very time consuming. I also defrosted some frozen cut zucchini that I randomly got the other day (I didn't know they made frozen zucchini). But it seemed seasonal.



I threw in the beans, zucchini, and carrots, then I added the olive oil/garlic mixture I'd made, carefuly not to add a lot of the garlic since I was pretty sure it would be garlicky. I also thought some dill would make a nice addition so I threw some dried dill in as well. I mixed, set in the fridge, added more olive oil and dill to the olive oil/garlic mixture, and went off on my bike ride.



When I came back, I cooked 1 cup of barley and steamed 12 stalks of asparagus. With the asparagus I decided to be fancy- I steamed them for just a couple of minutes and tossed them in an ice water bath. I see it all the time on TV and I'm really sure what it does, but it seemed apporpriate. And it cooked it down so I could add it to the dish. When the barley was done, I put it on a plate and stuck it in the freezer for 10 minutes or so to cool it down. I then added the barley and asparagus to the salad along with the olive oil/garlic/dill mixture and some salt. I'm so scared of over salting so I tried to minimalize the amount I added. It also had a strong garlicky taste, which is fine by me. Then I put it in the freezer just to make sure it's all cold enough.

It was pretty tasty and it lasted forever, which was great during my first week of tri training!