Pasta salad

This pasta salad recipe was given to me by a friend a few years ago and ever since then, it's been at just about every bbq we go to.  It was always at every single bbq we did and to this day people still request me to bring it. It's so simple!

What you need:

1 box of tri-colored rotini, cooked according to al dente directions, drained and cooled (they didn't have any when I went this time, the tri-color makes it so fun. I've even subbed whole wheat pasta for it and it tastes just as good! Just make sure you use a type that will trap the dressing as opposed to a flat pasta that it will fall right off of)

1 bottle of Italian dressing

1 small purple onion, diced

1 red bell pepper, seeded, cored, diced

1 green bell pepper, seeded, cored, diced

1 container of grape tomatoes, sliced in half

1 medium can sliced olives (I omitted them because Danny doesn't like olives)

1 container of parmesean cheese

Salt and Pepper

Directions:

Once pasta is cooked and cooled put it in a bowl and add diced veggies, half the bottle of italian, approximately 1/4 cup parm, salt and pepper to taste. Mix it up and add ingredients as needed. Enjoy!

Easy throw together pasta

I make this (and other variations of this) when I'm looking for something quick. It's whole wheat penne, fresh spinach, grape tomatoes, parmesean, olive oil, garlic, and lemon. I cooked the pasta, put the spinach in the collander before draining the pasta. I poured the cook pasta over the spinach in the collander to "steam" the spinach. Then return it to the pot, add olive oil, garlic, parm, italian seasoning, crushed red pepper flakes (if you want a little kick!), lemon zest, lemon juice, grape tomatoes that are sliced in half, parm, stir and warm up and enjoy! It's so easy! I have also added kale before, or used orzo pasta with a little bit of arribata sauce (spice red sauce), spinach, kale, lemon juice. You can really play around with this as far as flavors go! I love it.