Cold Summer Pasta Salad with a Healthy Twist

Nutritionally packed delicious meatless meal. A pasta salad loaded with veggies, perfect for boosting your summer activities. Not only is the recipe easy, it's made ahead and chilled. So no running around, or if you are like me just staring in the fridge, pondering the nightly battle "what's for dinner". 

Using some basic kitchen staples, this can be whipped up in half hour or less. To get started you will need-

-pasta

-3 veg combo

-natural yogurt

-seasoning 

Get your water boiling for the pasta. I used a pasta that was made with carrots and squash so that my veggie serving count was stepped up.  We are also a family with a strong love of the spices. I added to my water some salt, pepper, and crushed red peppers. This is a cold summer pasta salad so refrigerate the pasta after cooking it.

I worded the ingredients as "3 veg combo" because any three vegetables that you love would work. I used for this cilantro(a favorite in our home), bell pepper, and onion. This recipe is so versatile you could switch it up and use corn, cucumber, and red onion, just one other way but it's really limitless. 

To save tons of time I used a food processor to do my chopping. Once, your veggies are cut up it's really a matter of just mixing everything together. In a large bowl combo the pasta, all the veggies, and dollop in natural yogurt. Remember that you can always add more but you can't really remove any. Adding salt, pepper, and lime juice to taste. 

I sprinkled on some Tony Chachere's. Tonys is used as an all spice in our home, as in it goes on all our recipes. 

I have the most lovely free range chickens so I boiled up a few farm eggs and served them up on the side for added protein. We are so active with building our homestead, gardening, and the animals that the added protein is appreciated. We are striving to break our life long training as carnivores and it's challenging. Both my Mr. and myself were raised in "meat and potato" homes. I'm not saying we are going full fledge vegetarian but we are at least making the steps necessary for the switch:)  

Hope you enjoyed the recipe. If you give it a try this weekend, email and share how it went:) 

Sharing a few pics from this week-

Here's our "old man" we have nick named him Mr Grandpa because he is getting old enough now that he needs some assistance. 

This is me with one of our ameraucana chickens.

This is also an ameraucana chicken. Isn't it awesome how the other one has the red coloring and this one is white. We don't have any other white ameraucanas so this one has been dubbed snow. We originally called "her" Snow White, but now we have some apprehension that she may be a he...crazy farm life y'all:) 

This beast was extra creepy in person, it photographs almost beautifully. Any idea what it is? Alright y'all have good times this weekend, but remember to keep it classy.