Tri-Color Pasta

The Chef: Colleen

The Menu: A perfectly prepared pasta meal. Whole-wheat penne with diced tomatoes, garlic, spinach, and garbanzo beans. If there's anything better than a simple pasta lunch, we pretty much don't want to know about it. Colleen did improve on her hearty main with a lovely green salad with a balsamic vinaigrette.

The Goods: Colleen is one of the nicest people on the planet, in case you didn't know that. After her two-week trip to New York City, she generously offered to take over cooking for this whole week! Just another reason why we love her. Oh, and did we mention that she and Joseph brought back the biggest box of Sweet & Sara goodies we've ever seen? We're up to our eyeballs in marshmallows, s'mores, and biscotti! Yes, things are pretty good here at the VNHQ.

Black Beans and Sticky Rice

The Chef: Kailey

The Menu: A quick, healthy meal of red-pepper-infused black beans with sticky rice and a huge, fresh spinach salad with zucchini, wax beans, and sunflower seeds. Kailey adapted one of her favorite spicy beans recipes to fit what was on-hand in the VNHQ kitchen, which worked out just about perfectly. And in case you were wondering, if your rice is lagging for some reason, you can totally get away with serving it before it's completely done just by calling it "sticky rice." Brilliant!

The Goods: Maybe we put the requisite ten pounds of Parma! on this meal. Maybe the accepted thinking around the office is that it's totally OK to pile on as much Parma! as you like, since, you know, it's got your B-12, which we hear is important. Though this happened after lunch had officially concluded, some goods arrived in the form of a case of Dandies. Maybe some of us are dead in sugar comas right now, and couldn't be happier about it.