Food Lovin' Friday- Rainbow Pasta Salad

What's your favorite summer food?  Barbecue chicken?  Corn on the Cob?  I love pretty much every single thing about summer, especially the food selection.  My all-time favorite summer food that I could eat every day at every meal is a fresh pasta salad.  I have been working on mine for a few summers now, and the other night I think I did it.  I made the PERFECT pasta salad.  And now you can too! 

Here's what you'll need:

Cooked pasta (I chose Rainbow Rotini)

Broccoli Crowns

Tomatoes

Red Onion

Fresh Mozzarella

A bell pepper (I had an orange one on hand, but any color will get the job done)

Whatever other veggies you'd like to use (I had some corn, so I threw that in)

Italian Dressing (I actually used Parmesan Italian)

Chop it all up:



I love taking blurry pictures.  But get past that,
and admire the colors. Your salad is
going to look DIVINE.





Fact:  I am trying to stay away from dairy.
Fact:  I LOVE fresh mozzarella.

Add the cheese last.

In fact, I love it so much that I needed to take two pictures.



Throw it all in a big bowl, mix it all together and top it off with the dressing.  Do yourself two favors here. One- don't drown those gorgeous fresh vegetables, and two- don't use fat-free or reduced fat dressing.  It has a lot of chemicals that are just weird.

Almost done...

TA-DA!  How good does that look?!?!

Have you ever eaten something and immediately started looking forward to the next meal so you could eat it again?  Um, yeah.  That's the effect this pasta salad has on me. I kind of couldn't stop thinking about it.

I served it with some Italian Sausage (another summer favorite).  Mine was spicy turkey. 
The grill wasn't loaded up with new propane yet, so I had to make do with the ol' stove top.  It worked out.

So this picture totally reminded me of how I don't want to look in my bathing suit this summer.  And then I was reminded that I needed to hit the gym. 

This is what happened:

Friday- nothing.  I ate 12 pounds of pasta salad and my clothes began to resemble sausage casing.

Saturday- 2 miles on the treadmill and free weights.  A majorly needed sweat session. 

Sunday- Nothing.  Wow, I'm lazy.  Well, in my defense, the hubs was golfing so I couldn't go to the gym. The boys and I took a walk that probably burned about 12 calories. 

Monday- Power Body night!!  Awesome!! 

I'm really looking forward to a great week, and I hope you are too.  I've got some good posts planned, too, so make sure you check back in with me.  And hey- I'd really love it if you left a comment once in a while. Cuz at this point, I have pretty much no idea if anyone even reads this thing...

Have a healthy day,

J