Summer Pasta Salad

Summer makes blogging easier. The light is great, and the ingredients, local produce, make for great photos with no work. It also makes eating easier. The elegant, fresh flavors of summer fruits and vegetables lend themselves to quick meals without much fuss, almost as if nature planned it that way. . . I just need to find a place where it is like this year round!

As you know, I have been working mostly from home, but this week I started a contract job that has me in the office more. And that means making lunch again. Summer helped make that a no-brainer. A fresh, light, and veggie-packed pasta salad was my first thought, and it was a good one.

I started with about 3/4 bag of Trader Joe’s orecchiette, the little ear shaped pasta. I really like tiny pastas in pasta salad. I got the water boiling and the pasta cooking while I prepped the rest of my simple recipe.

An entire shallot, finely diced, went into the pan.

It joined a large zucchini, two small summer squashes, and grape tomatoes, all from Trader Joe’s, and all local or semi-local, at the very least grown somewhere in the US, an option that my Shaw’s just does not offer. Does it ever completely enrage you that, even in the height of the season, we import veggies and fruits from everywhere but our local farmers? Hello, economy fix. Let’s support businesses in our communities!

Anyhow. . . once the pasta was cooked, I mixed it in with the vegetables and four triangles of Laughing Cow garlic & herb cheese. For a light cheese, which I normally would laugh at, I actually think Laughing Cow is good, and mixed in with the veggies and pasta, it made a nice cream “sauce”. Yummy.

I forgot to take a photo of the final product, but it was great! It made for a lunch I looked forward to, and for me, that is the ultimate test of a lunch recipe.

This pasta salad would make a great vegetarian side dish or main dish for a summer BBQ, as long as it isn’t kept out in the sun too long!

What did you have for lunch at work this week? Anything delicious?