Labor Day Cookout

Happy Labor Day, friends.

Lucas and I went over my parents' house today for a little family cookout. I was excited to have an opportunity to make some pasta salad (with fresh tomatoes from here at Pohickery Farm!), burgers, and cookies. We've been getting our beef from a local farmer who is at the Farmer's Market on Tuesdays. It's neat knowing where our meat is coming from, what kind of cows provided the meat, how they were fed, and support the local farmers who provide the meat.

I made pasta salad for the first time a couple months ago. When searching for a recipe for pasta salad, I stumbled upon this article, Five Steps to Perfect Pasta Salad. It's a really nice, simple outline of how to make pasta salad using your favorite ingredients. These steps include pasta, key ingredients, intense flavors, onions & herbs, and dressing. The article includes a link to a recipe for dressing, but simple zesty italian dressing from the grocery store works just fine, as does balsamic vinaigrette. However, balsamic vinaigrette tends to brown your salad and make it less pretty looking. After trying many different combinations of ingredients, I settled on rotelle and penne pasta with yellow peppers, celery, red onion, feta or peccorino romano cheese, basil, and grape tomatoes as my go-to pasta. One of the main reasons I like this combination is because of how colorful it ends up being. You can also do pasta salad in different themes like Italian (sun-dried tomatoes & Italian sausage), Asian (sesame seeds & citrus zest), or Greek (feta cheese & olives).

You can just have fun with it and make it fit whoever you're serving it to!