Creative cooking: thinking *inside* the can when fresh food betrays you and tries to kill off your country

With the big, scary drugproof e coli threat hanging over us, we had to get creative making a salad to take to a barbecue this weekend. They've gone from blaming unknown meats, to bagged salads, to Spanish cucumbers, to bell peppers to organic bean sprouts for the raging, superhero strength e coli over the last few weeks. And, since it doesn't seem anyone actually knows where the bacteria is coming from, we've been playing it safe and sticking to frozen veggies and canned fruits.

But, a pasta salad should be fresh! Unless it could kill you. So, we threw together oil packed sun dried tomatoes, roasted red peppers, feta cheese, canned olives, marinated artichoke hearts (just for that extra germ killing kick) with tri-color rotini and a sun dried tomato vinaigrette.

And it was actually pretty good! Which taught me two things:

1. Pasta is magical. You can pretty much throw anything into a bowl as long as you add noodles.

2. I sneer at frozen veggies and canned fruits no longer. They could one day save your life.