My Favorite Summer Dish

With so much time at home, I’ve been cooking more than ever AND ordering from DoorDash more than ever on the days I’m not feeling it.

It’s supposed to be a beautiful weekend, so I wanted to share a great dish you can add to this weekend’s menu or your summer menu in general. Whether you enjoy barbecues/cookouts or more traditional homestyle meals, this dish is sure to be a great addition to your summer meals. Whenever I'm invited to a potluck or entertain in the summer, my go to dish is pasta salad, and often times I add shrimp. I adopted the recipe I use from my mom, and made a few slight tweaks to make it my own, such as using rotini instead of spaghetti noodles. This delicious dish is perfect with grilled entrees, and many times I eat it as an entree itself for a lighter lunch.

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INGREDIENTS

  • 1 box of rotini noodles

  • 2 tomatoes

  • 1 cucumber

  • 1 cup of chopped bell peppers

  • 1 bag of carrots, broccoli, and cauliflower mix

  • 1 large bottle for Kraft zesty italian dressing

  • 1 container of McCormick's salad supreme seasoning

  • Old Bay Seasoning

  • Tail-off, peeled and deveined medium sized shrimp

  • Glass serving bowl

RECIPE

  1. Boil rotini noodles according to the directions on the box. Then rinse and set aside.

  2. Rinse and chop all of the vegetables into bite size/finely cut pieces using a knife. Alternatively, use a food chopper, which I love because it saves so much time, or buy pre-chopped vegetables. Once you are done, put the chopped vegetable mix into a bowl, and mix well.

  3. Place 1/3 of your cooked rotini into a glass serving bowl. Add 1/3 of your chopped vegetable mix into the glass serving bowl. Then sprinkle a nice amount of salad supreme seasoning over the mixture and add 1/4 of the zesty Italian dressing. Mix all of the ingredients in the bowl well.

  4. Optional Step: If you want to add cooked shrimp to your pasta salad, rinse the shrimp and then season them in a separate bowl with Old Bay Seasoning and lemon pepper. When doing step 3 above, add 1/3 of the shrimp from the bowl to the mixture.

  5. Repeat step 3 twice (and optional step 4), which should result in a large well seasoned bowl of pasta salad with or without shrimp.

  6. My suggestion is to cook your pasta salad the day before your intend to eat it and let it sit in the refrigerator overnight to wake up the flavor. Save any extra salad supreme, vegetable mix and zesty Italian dressing.

  7. The next morning, taste the pasta salad, and add extra salad supreme and zesty Italian dressing as needed. Then sprinkle a little of the vegetable mix on top. Serve and Enjoy!

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I don't know about you, but now I'm hungry and can't wait to make another batch of this again soon! Tell me if you plan to try this tasty summer dish, and 1 of your favorite go to dishes for summer.

Have a glowing day!

Xo,

Shalyce

FoodieShalyce Tyson#MJConsistencyChallengeComment