Real Healthy Pasta Salad

What picnic would be complete without a cold, olive-dotted bowl of pasta salad? Gee, traditional pasta salad doesn’t even sound appetizing to me anymore. I can anticipate how all those refined, gluten-filled carbs would feel in my tummy, and how sluggish and zapped I’d feel afterwards. So I set out to create a pasta salad without guilt, without gluten, and without a sluggish aftereffect.

The solution was simple: noodles, simply made with a vegetable peeler and zucchini, create the perfect base for pasta salad flavors. Serve this salad up alongside a grilled steak for an amazing, wholesome dinner that’s big on flavor.

Note: Here are three ways to create low carb noodles out of squash:

1. Use spaghetti squash. This is the least labor intensive of the three methods since the noodle strands are naturally part of the spaghetti squash. Wash the spaghetti squash, poke it all over with a fork, and bake at 375 ̊F for an hour. Cool and then slice in half. Scoop out and discard the seeds and pulp, then scrape the long, squash noodles out.

2. Use a simple vegetable peeler. In this recipe, and also in the recipe for Creamy Chicken Noodles, I simply use a standard vegetable peeler to create long, at noodles. It’s easy, quick, and cost effective.

3. Use a spiral slicer. Spiral slicers are really cool because it makes the zucchini noodles really look like traditional noodles. You can also vary the size and width of the noodles, taking it from angel hair-size to spaghetti noodle-size.