Salads & Summer Nummies...and a note on salad dressings

My FAVORITE summer meal is my concoction of Pasta Salad, but since we've started eating better, mine needed some tweaking. First of all, it needed homemade dressing-more on that below, if you want to read-, and secondly, it needed less pasta and more veggies. This was a HIT at my house. My 3 year old asked for 3 platefuls of it. Quick note: I'm not a fan of raw broccoli. I prefer it a little soft, so if you allow the dressing to soak into the broccoli, it softens it up nicely, and is super tasty!

Pasta salad

1 lb whole grain pasta or gluten free pasta
2 cans albacore tuna
1-3 handfuls of spinach, depending on your mood
1 colored pepper, diced
broccoli and cauliflower cut into small pieces
1 cucumber, peeled and diced
some shredded cheese

homemade dressing of your choice. See mine below.

Cook pasta according to package directions. Combine all ingredients and let marinate in fridge.

Homemade Dressing

3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
2-3 T flax seed oil
1/2 cup raw apple cider vinegar
fresh dill
1 T dijon mustard
3 whole cloves garlic, peeled
1 t sea salt (or to taste)
2 t Italian seasoning
1 T parsley or fresh parsley
fresh dill or other fresh herbs
Combine in BlendTec and press Dressings.

I fell in LOVE with this tasty smoothie! Tell me what you think!

Yummy Summer Treat

Honeydew
Fresh Mint leaves
Cram as much honey dew in blender as you can. Throw in a small handful of mint leaves. Blend and enjoy. If you're thinking ahead, this would be fabulous with half of the honeydew pieces frozen. Your kids will LOVE IT!!

Fruit Bouquet

We had this last Sunday for our dessert, which we only do on Sundays now, if the kids can go to church without eating sugar. Yes, it IS offered to them EVERY SUNDAY! It was super easy and super fun. The pictures aren't great, but here is the link for the details. Enjoy!

***Note on salad dressing:
Bottled salad dressings are a danger to your health. Virtually all of them contain one or more of the following dangerous ingredients:

Monosodium glutamate (MSG). This is also hiding in hydrolyzed vegetable protein and dozens of other food additives, so you may not recognize that it’s in your bottled dressing. MSG makes you crave more of the foods it is in and thus has been linked to the obesity epidemic. Perhaps even more importantly, it is a neurotoxin that has been linked to brain damage, central nervous system damage, and dozens of other major health problems.
High-fructose corn syrup. The very worst of all the refined sugars, it is linked to diabetes, tooth decay, and obesity, among dozens of other health risks. 

Refined oils. These are oils such as soy, safflower, canola, and other vegetable oils which are heated above 400° and made rancid and, therefore, carcinogenic. Everyone knows trans fatty acids (TFAs) are deadly, but even refined oils that are not manufactured and bombarded with hydrogen atoms like TFAs are very harmful to our health, damaging every cell they come into contact with. Despite the claims of soy product manufacturers, who have been very successful at promoting soy in the past two decades, soy oil and other refined soy products are thyroid suppressants.

Chemical additives and preservatives. These include propylene glycol, sodium laureth sulfate (SLS), and other chemicals whose names you cannot pronounce. Although PG and SLS are known by the FDA to cause liver and kidney damage, the FDA approves these chemicals and many others if they are “food grade,” which means that the rodents and droppings are strained out. 
Ew.

This is partially taken from Green Smoothie Girl. I found it very interesting. We are experimenting, and so far we've had 1 keeper (above) and one not-so-good. Note to self-measure lime juice, don't just pour it in. :)