One thing is certain about this salad. It’s much lighter and healthier than your average pasta salads.

Zucchini Pasta Salad
Serves: 6
Time: 30 minutes
inspired by the fresh fridge

Ingredients
1/2 lb zucchini
1/2 lb fresh green beans, steamed
1 heaping cup grape tomatoes
1/2 small white onion
fresh cilantro
1 lb tri-color rotini
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp kosher salt

Marinade
1/2 cup grated Parmesan
3/4 cup Italian dressing
salt to taste

Directions
In a 5 quart pot, bring 2 quarts of water to a rolling boil. Add salt and olive oil. Dump entire box of rotini and cook on high for 8 minutes. Drain in colander and rinse with cold water. This stops the cooking process and your pasta won’t be mushy.

Scrub zucchini with water and a smidgen of baking soda. This ensures squeaky clean veggies since you won’t be peeling them. Cut into halves lengthwise, then cut those halves again lengthwise two more times. Confused yet? Basically, you want to end up with fairly thin, long sticks of zucchini which you then dice into cubes. Cut the green beans into 1 1/2 inch pieces (or smaller if you’d like) and dice the onion finely. Leave the grape tomatoes whole, just don’t forget to wash ’em! A note about the zucchini and green beans: I love my zucchini raw but if you don’t, you can just steam them for a few minutes. For me, green beans are perfect when they still have some crunch so steam them about 3-4 minutes for the perfect consistency.

Toss all the veggies together with half the marinade, coating throughly. Add veggies to cooled rotini and add remainder of marinade. Mix well! Give it a taste and adjust for salt, marinade accordingly. Any leftovers will last refrigerated for about 4 days. Enjoy with fresh, lemon water!