Grilled Vegetable Summer Pasta Salad Recipe

After the pool party we recently hosted, we had lots of leftover grilled vegetables. Pasta salads are a great way to make use of leftover veggies, so today I prepared some for the family. It was really easy; all I needed to do was boil some pasta and add some salad dressing to it.

This time around I made a spicy salad dressing that I drizzled over fusilli pasta, roasted bell peppers, grilled eggplant, grilled Portobello mushrooms and sun-dried tomatoes. This meal met everyone's diet, except for my father-in-law who's allergic to mushrooms (no meat, not nuts, no eggs), so I placed the grilled mushrooms on the side.

Tuna Pasta Salad Recipe

Tuna pasta salad is one of the easiest school lunches of all times. The pasta salad can be prepared a day in advance; I usually prep the ingredients the day before and assemble the salad the next morning. All you need is mayonnaise, tuna, boiled pasta (I used fusilli) and various grilled vegetables.

Back to school lunches have never been that easy! Fusilli pasta have a fun look and the corkscrew curl in the center traps the mayonnaise so you get a creamy pasta salad. This one dish makes a balanced meal for kids in your life.

Red Pesto Pasta Salad Recipe

Pasta salad is an easy dish for quick on-the-go meals. For this version, I used radiatore pasta because its unique shape that traps the sauce into the corkscrew-style curls. The sauce is a colorful bright red pesto made of sun-dried tomatoes, roasted red bell pepper, eggplant and pine nuts.

This is a perfect main course or side dish for picnics or summer parties. This time, I let the pesto pasta salad chill in the refrigerator for our family’s road trip to Oregon. We're leaving in the wee hours of the morning today and will arrive in Ashland for Oregon's annual Shakespeare Festival. We're looking forward to the visit! I will try to post about it and share our experience with you.

Seafood Crab Salad Recipe

I bought 2 fresh crabs from the seafood market and was planning on making my favorite dish: tamarind crab. But as I was prepping the ingredients, we had surprise guests for lunch. So I improvised a crab salad with what we had available in the kitchen. All the extra ingredients and flavors in the salad help stretch the number of servings you can get out of 2 crabs, which is perfect when you’re entertaining.

To begin with, I boiled the crabs, removed the crab meat and drizzled it with lime juice. I added roasted green bell pepper, tomatoes, avocado and grilled eggplant. I served the crab salad with a flavorful wasabi-coconut salad dressing and toasted bread on the side.

French Cauliflower Salad Recipe (Salade de Chou Fleur)

Today's recipe is an easy and healthy salad called "chou-fleur vinaigrette". During my childhood in France, it was a dish that was served fairly frequently at the cafeteria of my elementary school (carottes Vichy too!). Cauliflower is boiled, then coated with vinegar and oil and sprinkled with flat-leaf parsley. That’s it! Who says French cooking has to be complicated?

I've mentioned quite a few times lately that I've been trying to eat healthier. Cauliflower is a big part of that because it's packed with fiber and vitamin C. But cauliflower salad is not a full meal by itself, so I added hard-cooked quail eggs and a piece of bread on the side. It’s a simple, quick and healthy summer meal. Rachael Ray would be proud!