Lunch: French Onion Soup and Asian Pasta Salad

We had lunch with my parents today as a farewell for a trip that they're taking (actually, their itinerary almost exactly matches HH's, so it was more me saying goodbye and him saying see ya later!). I'd found a fantastic recipe for French Onion Soup that I was eager to try, so we had that and I made up a salad to go with it. Seriously, if you're making French Onion soup, do consider this recipe -- it's fairly time-consuming but had an incredible amount of flavor -- much lighter than your average French Onion, but it packed a nice punch!

The salad was inspired by one I found somewhere online -- I wanted to do a pre-tossed salad with chicken in it, so we'd have protein in our meal, but still in a very light form. I was intrigued because this one included pasta, and then it had a teriyaki dressing on it. An Asian pasta salad? But it made 22 servings, so I figured I'd do my own thing. First, I cooked up some brown rice shell pasta (b/c my mom can't eat wheat; however, I liked how firm the texture of this pasta remained even after soaking in dressing overnight). After the pasta cooled, I drenched it in a Ginger Mandarin dressing I'd found at the store (I think any Asian-flavored dressing would do). Then I let it sit in the fridge all night. When I was getting lunch ready, I tossed in chopped carrots, green onions, bell peppers, chicken and avocado. Right before serving, I added in spinach and toasted almond slices. Yum! HH said that both items should make it into the permanent rotation, and I'm inclined to agree.

Hmm, this is kind of a boring post without pictures -- if I'm going to regularly blog about food, I guess I should get used to taking pictures of what I make!