New Favorite Pasta Salad and Giveaway Winner!

What an awesome and satisfying weekend. Hope yours was too. The 80 degree weather and two days full of sunshine made a great canvas for family fun outside. We went to the Elmwood Park Zoo (which is perfect for young kids and a smaller zoo than the Philadelphia zoo) and took the kiddos miniature golfing (about the same time of year as last year's mini golfing fun). We also went to Whole Foods for a fun family outing - always a treat for me. 

Feeding the giraffes at Elmwood Park Zoo.

Little Guy watching a bison at the zoo.

More playing going on than golfing!

Plus, I had a little time to cook this weekend which always make me feel happy and satisfied. I whipped up some asparagus-bean pasta salad based on a recipe in Martha Stewart Living's Meatless cookbook. It was SO yummy. 

Here's the pasta salad I made right on top of Martha Stewart's version!

And here are the ingredients I used - a bit different than the original recipe:

• 1 cup cooked garbanzo beans (chickpeas)
• 1/2 box (8 oz) pasta - This time I used whole wheat for the adults, but you can easily substitute gluten free Rice or Quinoa pasta if you'd like
• Bunch of asparagus (more or less to your liking)
• 3 celery stalks
• Bunch/handful of basil
• 1/3 cup olive oil
• 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
• 1/4 tsp sugar
• salt and pepper to taste

The awesome thing about pasta salad is you can throw in whatever ingredients you prefer. Just keep the proportions about the same. Other kinds of beans or even chopped chicken or shrimp would also be great in this pasta salad.

And making it is pretty easy. I steamed the asparagus and cut it up into pasta size bites.

I whisked the olive oil, vinegar and sugar, and added the asparagus and chickpeas.

Then I added the pasta and let it all sit together for at least one hour.

You can do this, or you can eat a whole cup of it immediately just as I did :)

I added some awesome salty black olives to (one) of my portions. This yummy pasta salad was just as satisfying as our weekend!

Here's the awesome Martha Stewart Living cookbook that includes the recipe I adapted in this post!

  

And as for the giveaway winner....CONGRATS to "oopsudroppedthis" for winning the 5 Daiya coupons for free products!  I will email you so I know where to send them! Thanks to everyone for leaving a comment for the giveaway.

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