Healthy Recipes: Whole Wheat Pasta Salad

As a college student, there are a lot of things that challenge my healthy lifestyle.  When I think of a recipe, I like to think about price and practicality.  Thinking about things like working with minimal ingredients is one way to make it cheap; another is getting the most of of your money by making enough to give you leftovers for a few days.

One way to stay on track is to make a "bulk meal" in the beginning of the week (like Sunday, for example), that you can scoop into tupperware to bring to work or class or just munch on when you have had a long day and do not want to cook.  This stops you from being tempted by fast food options on the way home when you think about having a nice meal to have ready for you.  This one in particular is perfect for an on-the-go lifestyle. In addition, this is a great thing to have in the fridge when you have multiple mouths to feed.  That way, after you have run around all day and do not want to multiple meals in a week, your family can have a healthy option that you already prepared.  It's nice to have one less thing to worry about.

PS- I am going to try to post a recipe like this every week so you have a "bulk meal" so you can have something new to prepare the rest of the week!

Whole Wheat Pasta Salad (makes 9 servings of 1 cup)
Ingredients:

• 3 cups (dry) of whole wheat or whole grain pasta of choice (I picked fussili and rigatoni)
• 3 cups of your favorite chopped veggies (I picked up a container at Trader Joes called the "Healthy 8 Chopped veggie mix"
• 1 can of black beans, drained
• 3 tbs pumpkin seed oil (sub: olive oil)
• 8 tbs apple cider vinegar
• If you want, you can also do about a half a cup of your favorite salad dressing instead of oil and vinegar.

Directions (easiest thing you will make all week!):

• Boil water and cool the pasta until al dente. 
• Put all of the dry ingredients in a bowl.  
• Drain the cooked pasta, and allow it to cool.  To save time, I rinsed my pasta after draining it in cold water so I wouldn't have to wait as long for it to cool.
• Add the pasta into the bowl along with the oil and vinegar.
• Season to taste!  I chose garlic salt, crushed red pepper, Italian seasoning (oregano, basil, etc), and pepper.
• Add protein toppings like chopped chicken, shrimp, tofu, cheese, nuts, whatever sounds good to you!

 Nutrition Info: