Apron Free Cooking ~ Creamy Pasta Salad

By Noel Lizotte

Memo­r­ial Day has launched our sum­mer pic­nick­ing sea­son. I don’t know about you, but I enjoy pic­nics. There’s just some­thing about gath­er­ing with friends and fam­ily and eat­ing out­side! We spend most evenings at our pic­nic table dur­ing warm weather. Some­times we have a crowd and some­times it’s just a small group.

The last cook­out we attended was a small gath­er­ing of eight peo­ple. For some folks, that’s a large crowd, but for us, it’s not even all the imme­di­ate fam­ily. The guys guarded the grill and made sure the ham­burg­ers and bratwurst were cooked up right. The gals tossed a salad, prepped the chips and cow­boy beans. The kids ran and worked up an appetite.

By the time the food was ready to eat, the kids had inves­ti­gated all cor­ners of the barn and the back­yard. They’d dis­cov­ered a bird’s nest, a baby bird casu­alty, a newly planted tree, the ponies and deter­mined that there were no new kit­tens in the barn. No won­der they were hungry.

I’m sure we all ate our share of food. It seems like fresh air and good com­pany makes a meal taste bet­ter and I feel like I always eat more than I should. I try to make up for the cook­out indul­gence over the next cou­ple of days. One of the recipes I use to feel like I’m eat­ing a lit­tle bet­ter is Creamy Pasta Salad. It also hap­pens to be a great dish to take to a picnic!

Creamy Pasta Salad

1 box (8 oz.) Pasta

1 pkg. (16 oz.) frozen Peas

1 bot­tle (16 oz.) Ranch Salad Dressing

2 c. shred­ded Ched­dar Cheese

Boil the pasta accord­ing to pack­age direc­tions. Add the frozen peas to the boil­ing water just before pasta is done cook­ing. Let the pasta and peas cook for another minute or two. Drain pasta and peas in a colan­der, then rinse with cold water. Toss in a large bowl with dress­ing and ched­dar cheese. Chill for one hour.

Make it a meal: Add diced ham to the salad to make it more sub­stan­tial. It could pass as a whole meal when served on a bed of let­tuce. To make it a low fat salad, change out the cheese and dress­ing for low or no fat versions.

Approx­i­mate Nutri­tional Value per serv­ing: Serv­ings per Recipe: 20, Calo­ries: 282, Fat: 22g, Cho­les­terol: 33mg, Sodium: 385mg, Total Carbs: 14g, Dietary Fiber: 2g, Pro­tein: 8g.

I’ve taken this salad to pic­nics and it’s a hit with most folks. Kids like it because they can eas­ily iden­tify the ingre­di­ents. Adults like it because it’s cool and creamy with­out being heavy. I rarely bring much left over salad home after the pic­nic. The bowl is usu­ally empty.

A note on the quan­ti­ties, this is a recipe intended to feed a crowd. If you’re mak­ing it for a fam­ily of four, you may want to cut the por­tions in half. I have a hard time adjust­ing my cook­ing to amounts for a small fam­ily. I tend to cook in large quan­ti­ties. Some­times I’m able to freeze left­overs. This is not a good freez­ing menu item. I’d sug­gest shar­ing it with the neigh­bors if you end up with too much food!

Noel Lizotte is break­ing free of cor­po­rate stress with con­ve­nience cook­ing! www.apronfreecooking.com. She also writes a monthly col­umn at www.culinary.net.

Posted by Noel Lizotte on May 29 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.