Ginger Pasta Salad

You know how they say your tastebuds change every seven years?  Well, I don't know about that, but I'm sure everyone has had the experience of liking certain foods they didn't used to before.  Ginger is one of those foods for me.  As a child, I hated ginger, though that's not saying much since I have yet to meet a child who likes it.  But now that I'm older (and wiser?), I have grown to love this Asian spice.  Lately, I've been particularly inspired to experiment with it in the kitchen, so here's the first of a series of ginger recipes I've been working with in recent weeks.

R. and I were visiting his mom for the fourth of July and we had some of her homemade ginger pasta salad - no exaggerations here, but it was the first pasta salad I've ever liked.  It was so good that after we got home, I wanted to try making it myself.  While I could have just asked mom-in-law for her recipe, I wanted to see if I could recreate her dish on my own, and this is what I came up with.

Ginger Pasta Salad

Ingredients:

Celery, 2 stalks, diced
Cherry tomatoes, about 24, halved
Edamame, 5 oz
Red onion, 1/2, small diced
Cilantro, 1 cup chopped
Baby carrots, 1/2 cup sliced
Red pepper, 1/2, diced
Red wine vinegar, 1/2 cup
Whole wheat rotini, 1 (1 lb) package
*Ginger, 3 tbsp freshly grated
Pine nuts, 1/3 cup, toasted

Directions:

1. Cook rotini according to package directions.  Drain.
2. In a large bowl, mix the first seven ingredients together (from celery to red pepper).
3. In another large bowl, toss together the cooked rotini, grated ginger, and red wine vinegar.
4. Pour the pasta into the mixed veggies.  Toss well.  Top with toasted pine nuts.

*Disclaimer:  I am a ginger fiend and like to be able to taste it in my dish, so I am rather generous when it comes to the amount of ginger to use.  It may or may not work for everybody.

Cherry Tomato Salad

Cherry Tomato Salad

Believe or not, I actually like salads a lot, but I never seem to like anything I make at home, which explains the lack of salad entries on this blog. This Cherry Tomato Salad is one of the few rare exceptions. Those who follow me on Twitter or Facebook (yes, I've finally set up a Facebook page! Check it out and "like" it to get updates!) will recognize this as the same salad featured in my profile picture.  Partly because it is colorful and pretty, but also because it is quite tasty (if you like olives), with a balanced mix of sweetness, saltiness, and tartness.  If there is a large bowl of this salad in front of me, you can bet that I'll eat it all before I even realize it!  I hadn't made this in a long time, actually, but this week I just felt like something different and refreshing, and this just so happened to fit the bill perfectly.

Recipe courtesy of:
Allrecipes (get the recipe here)