Whip it Up Challenge: Week 1

As I mentioned, uh, I think it was yesterday, summer is the perfect time for trying out recipes that require little to no effort. Not only because we have this hungry little mouth around now - who hasn't quite mastered the art of self-feeding - but also because we have to hurry to eat so we can go back to parking our roasting sticky selves on the couch after bathtime and bedtime. (Less movement, less sweat, as you know.)


It's not unusual for us to try more than one new recipe in a week around here and this week was no different. I made quite a stellar variation of this key lime pie a few nights ago but decided not to submit that as my recipe this week because I never managed to get one 'perfect' piece of pie out of the plate without one of us inhaling it five seconds later.

So for Week One, I submit to you: Pizza Pasta Salad.

Was the recipe easy to follow? Quite, but we made ours with the following 'alterations': We didn't use penne because we didn't have enough, so you'll notice from the pictures that we used fiori; we used one and a half big tomatoes, seeded; we only used three relatively thick slices of some sort of pepperoni or salami that Mr. J. picked out and it was perfectly spicy; and finally, we didn't use the mozzarella crumbles, we used about 1/3 cup of fresh mozzarella cut into cubes.

Did it taste good? Yup. Really good. So good that I'm not sending the rest of the leftovers to work with Mr. J. tomorrow. It didn't taste exactly like pizza, but that's okay. It was a hearty pasta salad, definitely good enough for a meal with a side of fresh veggies.

Would we make it again? It's very, very likely. Yum! Here's a couple pictures because I couldn't decide which one I liked better.