I skipped Monday's "What we're eating for dinner": Greek Orzo Salad

So now you get it on Wednesday, which works out anyway because I don't cook dinner on Wednesdays. Matt will have to come in and post or something.
This recipe (cleeeek) gets 3 outta 5 stars. Maybe I'll throw in an extra half a star. It's pretty good, but I definitely feel like the dressing could use more tang. More pucker.
It would also be a good idea to use fresh herbs instead of the enormous amount of dried herbs called for. Even when I let the herbs sit in the oil and vinegar for a while, the finished salad has a crunchy or papery, and sometimes sand like texture (you know, like when you accidentally get a grain of sand in your mouth at the shore and your teeth just barely press on it and your whole jaw feels like a chalkboard getting nails drug down it.) Which I don't quite like, as far as textures go. Could be worse I suppose. I don't think I left anything out of this recipe, but I did add diced raw red and yellow peppers that I had left over from cold noodle night. Oh and I typically opt for kalamata olives whenever something says to add "black olives." Because they are the true Queens of the olive world, no matter what that jar of green olives says. Might does NOT make Right, large greenies. You are good too though.

I've made this recipe twice before, and both of those times I used a feta (tofu) recipe (right here) to accompany the orzo salad. The first time I mixed it right into the salad after chilling it, the second time I spooned it on top of the individual servings so I could taste it better, which was not a good idea. It could have been that mixing it all together masked the intense lemon flavor, as the feta "sauce" was dispersed. It ALSO could have been that the first time I used half as much sauce as I should have. Regardless, at least cut back on your lemon juice amount if you make this. Or halve the entire recipe.  I give this recipe (if the sauce is 50% strength) 5 stars because it fooled an omnivore! They thought all those little bits of tofu were just bits of cheese. And this person, I found out later, thought tofu was disgusting. Just goes to show you just how much influence the brain has on whether we like or hate something we eat.  Also worth noting, I didn't use the type of tofu they called for, I think I just bought firm or the least firm, yet not silken, water-packed type you can get.