Italian Penne Pasta Salad

This was a simple, quick, and tasty dish. Pasta salad is really just an excuse to clean out the fridge.  Toss in some veggies, some meat, some dressing, and there you have it.  It could certainly be altered in a number of ways.  The first change I made was to HALVE the amount of dressing.  You can see by the picture that there was plenty of dressing for the amount of salad.  The dressing is what packs all of the calories, so it was an obvious choice to change.  I also added the baby spinach to each individual portion.  Mixing it into the salad would result in wilted greens should you want to eat it later for leftovers.  I added way more vegetables than the recipe called for; I changed the cheese; I left out the olives.  So I changed almost everything.  Again, I was using what I had on hand which is what I suggest you do.  Don't feel like you have to have the exact ingredients.  Play with what you have already.  The best part of making this dish was that there was no cooking involved!  I had baked chicken ready in the fridge (see Dinner-on-the-Run post) and leftover penne pasta from the Pecan Pesto Penne recipe on Tuesday.  The whole dinner was prepped in 10 minutes.  Here is the calorie count:

• Total calories per serving (6 total): 337.6 g
• Total fat: 13.7 g (sat. 3.8 g)
• Cholesterol: 56.8 mg
• Sodium:  393.4 mg(not including added salt to chicken)
• Carbohydrates: 26.4 g
• Fiber: 3.6 g
• Sugar: 3.3 g
• Protein: 25.2 g

Buon appetite!

Links:

1. Italian Penne Pasta Salad
2. Recipe Index