Veggie Pasta Salad

Just because summer is behind us 🙁 doesn’t means that we can’t enjoy our colorful veggies and greens.Capture the flavors of summer in this quick and easy to put together salad that is loaded with great flavors and texture. This recipe is adapted from Cheesecake Factory famous dish – “Evelyn’s Favorite Pasta – a  great pallet of flavors”. What I like most about this dish is that it is packed with variety of vegetables and is D- licious and super healthy. Above all, it’s a great hit among kids and appeals to adults as well.  RECIPE DETAIL – I have used fusilli or rotini pasta for this recipe but feel free to substitute it with your favorite one. Grilling colorful veggies makes a huge difference and is worth the extra effort. Flavors of grilled veggies add color and crunch to this salad and they blends perfectly with pasta. This recipe uses garlic salt, but if you don’t have garlic salt – no worries, just grate 2 small cloves of garlic, mix it in 2 teaspoon of olive oil, and rub it over the veggies. To bring out the wonderful nutty flavor, pinenuts are toasted and added to the salad. Pinenuts can be substituted with toasted walnuts or almonds. I have used store bought olives and artichoke hearts – drain the liquid and rinse the artichoke hearts and olives before adding them to the salad. Don’t like artichokes, you can skip that and adjust the seasoning in the salad. Didn’t had any eggplant on hand so I have skipped that.  Try this salad today for lunch or dinner, sit back and indulge in the rich flavors ♥ and let the salad bowl do the talking. 🙂