Greek Salad with Tortellini

One of the things I learned about myself during all the Covid lockdowns is that my limit on sandwiches is three per week. Doesn’t matter what was in them, once I got to the third time in a week of putting something between two slices of bread and eating it in the middle of the day I just couldn’t handle the idea of doing it again. Figuring out lunch alternatives was a hit or miss operation. There was a decent amount of soup and more than our fair share of cobbled together cheese and cracker type lunches. On one particularly grim afternoon it was frozen breaded prawns, a defrosted bagel and the dregs of a pint of chocolate ice cream. At that point it felt like I needed to get it together if for no other reason than my dignity.

And so was born the giant bowl of greek salad with tortellini. It started life as just a plain greek salad which worked really well when we had some decent bread around to go with it. We often didn’t though. The challenge was how to bulk out that salad so it felt like an entire meal that could keep us until dinner. Stuffed pasta to the rescue, as it often is.

Prepared stuffed pasta is a regular guest in our refrigerator. It is super quick to make and the variety is wide. Many hungry meltdowns have been avoided by a boiling pot and three minutes so the only mystery is why it took me so long to put two and two together but once I did there was no looking back. There are so many advantages to this dish and it is so flexible. It will take nearly any flavor of tortellini, a variety of vegetables if you don’t have the classic greek salad ingredients and it makes a bowl big enough that several people can have it for lunch for a couple days running. As a bonus, I figured out if you cut the vegetables chunky it also works really well on skewers for a summer party. It really is the gift that keeps on giving.