During my college years my standby, consisted of picking up the phone and calling Rogans Pizza for a delivery. These days that has changed. Instead of picking up the phone and calling for a pizza a quick standby is throwing a piece of salmon in a pan with some soy sauce and scallions. It only takes a few minutes and I feel better after than having eaten greasy pizza, though pizza is good too.

I think my college standby was bringing home a box of Cracklin Oat Bran from the dining hall. That being said, the quesadillas look delicious. I can't wait to try them out!

I also have a salmon favorite! It sounds a little sweeter than Sarah's, though. I heat up a sauce that is equal parts soy sauce and maple syrup, and I simmer the mixture until it reduces to about half its volume. Next, I pour half of the sauce over the salmon before I stick the fillet in the broiler. I re-coat the salmon half way through cooking. All in all, this dish takes less than 20 min. to make. I like to serve it with bok choy and couscous, sometimes pouring the last bit of the sauce over these as well. Yumm.

Luckily my college roommate's grandma owned an Italian restaurant and regularly sent us "ready to eat" Italian meals --which, of course, served as our stand-bys. With a busy schedule, I wish I still had such luxuries. I am not one for spending a lot of time in the kitchen so I think I might give the "20-Minute Quesadillas" a whirl.

20 minutes? I’d still be looking through my cabinets for the poblano peppers at that point. This recipe is an example of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity*, which states that any time estimate in a food magazine will be dilated by a factor of three when applied to real life. (Actually our blogger is just being modest. Kate “The Knife” Merker was in fact an indifferent student at CIA, but she was named valedictorian by acclamation after she set a new speed record in the onion-slicing sprint to wrest the 2003 New York Cooking League championship from their hated rivals, the heavily favored Fightin’ Chefs of ICE. The losers had to wear their aprons upside down for the next month, and some of them still haven’t gotten over it.)

* after Larry Einstein, founding editor of Kitchen Klutz magazine, who discovered the principle while making dumplings to serve with goulash (hence the theory’s alternative name, “spaetzle relativity”)