Summer Pasta Salad

One of my most favorite meals that my fabulous mother taught me to make was a summer pasta salad. With our crazy family of 6, I'm all for quick, easy, and delicious meals that the kids will enjoy. Luckily, my kids love everything in this dish, so preparing it is a no-brainer!
Ingredients:
Box of thin spaghetti
yellow pepper
red pepper
green bell pepper
cucumber
grape tomatoes
Shrimp!
bottle of zesty Italian salad dressing

Cook the noodles. I'm obsessed with these noodles that Mueller's came out with. There is a full serving of veggies in every one cup of noodles! If you're not a veggie fan, this is a great way to get your veggies in and not realize you're eating them (also works for fooling little kids into eating veggies). They have a great texture and don't leave a weird feeling in your mouth like other pastas can.

While the yummy noodles are cooking, cut up your veggies into small, bite sized chunks. You can add any veggies you would like, but there is no cooking other than the noodles, so the veggies will be eaten raw.


Isn't that beautiful?

 I found rings of cocktail shrimp on sale at the grocery store for $5.98 each and bought two of them for another dish. Forgetting that the other dish needed raw shrimp, that left two giant rings of shrimp to use for this pasta!

Once the noodles have finished cooking, drain them thoroughly. Add all of your beautiful veggies, pasta, and shrimp into one big bowl and then add about 3/4 of the bottle of Italian dressing. Refrigerate and enjoy tomorrow. Don't eat it the day you make it. The pasta has to have time to cool down.

Doesn't that look delicious?? And, it is very much diet friendly!!

Hope you enjoy this cool summer pasta dish as much as we do.