Summer Pasta Salad with Feta and Pine Nuts

I love pasta salads and summer is the perfect time to enjoy them. They are easy to put together, delicious to eat, and packed with raw vegetables that just make a pasta dish so much more nutritious. You can be really creative with a pasta salad and I never follow a recipe when I make one. I create one using a combination of vegetables in my refrigerator and nuts and herbs in my pantry! I generally use whole grain pasta for salads. It has a nuttier taste and is more chewy that adds to both taste and texture of the salad.

A pasta salad can be a complete meal, a side, or indeed great on a picnic table along with your favourite burgers, grilled vegetables, and greens! Just pack a box of it in a food safe container and place in an ice box until ready to eat! On Saturday we had beautiful weather and drove to the lake for a picnic. I made this winner of a salad for lunch. It got the thumbs up from everyone at home.

Quick Macaroni with Black Olives and Toasted Pine Nuts

We took a break over the weekend. Lovely scenic lakeside town with a gorgeous pier, sunshine, ducklings, and the cool cool breeze. It was great to get away for a couple of days. But not so great for my plants! When we got back, they looked one sorry sight. The July heat had got to them!! After some serious watering and encouraging words, they are back to normal and I even see some tiny green tomatoes on my tomato plants!! The beans are doing wonderfully and I have already got one small harvest of yellow wax beans. Nothing like growing your own.

Warm Broccoli-Spinach Pesto Pasta Salad

The one vegetable I always have in my refrigerator is broccoli. Interesting, some might say weird, but its true nevertheless!! I use broccoli in vegetables, salads, pastas, stocks, stir-fry - well you name it!! Today I tried something different with this vegetable - a warm pesto. This is pesto with a twist - it combines broccoli with spinach and pine nuts to give a nutritious and tasty alternative to regular pesto.