Greek Pasta Salad

Greek Pasta Salad

1 (12 oz.) Rotini Pasta cooked as directed
1 cup diced red onion
1 red ball pepper- diced
1 orange ball pepper diced
½ cup diced kalamata olives
1 cup crumbled feta cheese
1 pint cherry tomatoes- halved
1 cucumber-peeled and sliced
1 cup Greek salad dressing of your choice

Music from: elelments.envato.com

[Music] Good afternoon and welcome. I’m Susan. Glad you could be with me. Today we’re doing something. Well, we’re going to do a pasta salad. You know, tomorrow is the 4th of July, so we’re going to throw some chicken on the grill. And I thought I’d fix a pasta salad. And um thought that’d be kind of tasty. Now, we’re going to do a Greek pasta salad. Normally, I do an Italian pasta salad, but like I said, we’re going to do something different today. Now, I’ve already cooked the rotini, and this happens to be a vegetable rotini that I bought at the store. It’s with carrots, tomato, and spinach. So, it’s not your regular I don’t know. I guess they dye the dough somehow. But first, we’re going to going to cut up um red or purple onion, whatever you call it. Going to cut up some. I’ve got my bowl ready. Right now, I’ve got my cooked pasta draining in the sink. We don’t want it too watery. Tilly sees that I’m doing something on the counter that might be advantageous to her. Going to give this just I don’t know. I think we’ll do that’s probably that’s probably about a cup. Get my bench scraper here. I don’t know about um how you’re doing as far as temperature wise goes, but boy, we’ve got some hot water or some hot water got some heat coming. And I don’t take heat well anymore. Seems like the older I get, the less I take heat and cold. So, there you have it. Now, we’re going to cut up some red pepper. Going to dice this up. And I’ve got a yellow pepper or an orange one, too. You can use um you can use a green, but I think it’s a little too bitter for this. There’s a black spot. But I don’t know what it is, but we’re going to get rid of it. Now, I will tell you, when you cut up peppers, if you cut up, put the uh inside up toward your knife, it’s easier to cut and it’s easier on the knife blade. Just a little trick I thought I’d share with you. But we’ll get this one cut up. You know, I watch um I watch a lot of the YouTube videos and some of the women on there are just fantastic. And they do uh one thing that’s got me baffled. And I think that’s uh how you do like 30 freezer meals in one day. Now, that takes some planning. And I guess I I guess I really don’t need to do that. There’s just the two of us. So, you know, if there’s no meal plan here, there’s always uh um lunch meat for a sandwich. Having a sandwich for supper is not all bad. Will doesn’t mind it. I hope um hope you’re going to have a safe fourth. We are not going anywhere except for the backyard. We may not do that if it’s not uh cool enough. Okay, we’re going to get this in. Got a red pepper. One thing is colorful. Now, let’s do let’s do an orange pepper. And we’ve got tomatoes and cucumbers. And I have something that I don’t normally buy. And that’s a salad dressing that’s already made up for this. This is probably There we go. I normally like to make my salad dressings, but I was going through the store the other day and I happened to go down the uh the salad dressing aisle. Will’s telling me to speak up louder. You know, it seems like um I think with my Parkinson’s I just don’t talk as loud as I used to cuz I used to uh nobody had trouble hearing me. But things change, don’t they? We’re almost done with this and we’ll go on to to something else. Our garden is starting to really produce and we are going to have what are we going to have? Jalapenos, green peppers. Did we buy any red peppers? Well, that’s green pepper turnurning, isn’t it? I can’t remember what all we bought to plant beets. We’ve got beets coming up. We’re going to have to find recipes for 30 lbs of beets. I probably exaggerate there, but that’s freeze-dried. Freeze freeze-dried freeze-dried beets are really good. In fact, we’ve got a lot of uh freeze-dried fruits and vegetables downstairs. And it’s amazing how how they retain their their flavor. I was surprised when we got the freeze dryer that they retained their flavor so well. Okay. Now, I’ve got some little These are grape tomatoes. I’m going to cut these in half and then we’ll just throw them in there. Isn’t this fun watching me cut up vegetables? You’re such a cutup anyway. Oh, thank you. Such a cutup. We um have a kayak and we’re going on vacation. Not pretty soon. I don’t know when exactly, but we’re going over to um what is it? Abe Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln State Park in Mandan, North Dakota. We’re meeting some friends over there. So, we’re taking our kayak with us. because there’s a river right there. And uh I don’t know if you guys like to kayak, if you like to swim, uh tube. What else can you do in the lake? Fish. Fish. Oh my gosh. Yes. Fish. Ski. Water. Ski. Oh. Oh, we don’t skis. We don’t do that cuz we don’t have anything motorized. We just have the kayak which is or an arm motorized. Okay, let’s get these in there. Looks good, huh? Now I’m going to do a cucumber. I think I’m going to cut this up and see what happens. I’ve washed the cucumber already. Going to kind of score it. This will make it look a little nicer in the bowl. Although, this skin is really hard. Oh well, we’ll get her done here. I love cucumbers, but I’m going to take the seeds out because I think it it gets too watery if you don’t remove the seeds. And I you know, otherwise you can buy an English cucumber, too, and just cut it up. But like the old adage goes, use what you have. Hey, which it reminds me, well, I of course I don’t know how it reminds me, but new subscribers, I want to welcome you. I want to thank you. subscribers. Boy, oh boy. They’re what keeps me going because uh there are days when I have Parkinson’s can really kick your tush. And uh some days I just don’t feel like doing anything, but then I think, well, people have subscribed. I better do something nice. Get up and get to work. So, thanks for uh for getting me getting me moving. So, let’s cut up some of these cucumbers and then Oh, we’re almost done. I will say this is a pretty colorful salad. And of course, we’ll let it sit overnight and it’ll be really good tomorrow. I could have probably cut some of these smaller. That’s okay. Put these in here. I wonder if that’s going to be cut up the rest of that cucumber. One piece of cucumber. Well, yeah. There you go. Thank you. Certainly. Will had to put up an electric fence around our garden. We have deer and we have a pesky raccoon. I don’t know where he came from, but we saw him one day. Now, I’ve got these are imported black Greek olives. I’m going to cut these up. Um, I normally would have used calamatada, but I had these and I have these for I don’t remember. Oh, I know where we did a chuterie board. So, we’re going to cut these up. We can get them out of the jar. Susie, I think they heard me crunching that cucumber, so I apologize. Well, at least they know it’s fresh cucumber. That’s all right. Things happen, don’t they? If that’s the worst thing that happens on film, you know, you were crunching and and with my Parkinson’s, I’m wobbling back and forth and head bobbing and perfect match. There you go. You crunch and I bob. Bob and weave. What is that? That’s like boxing bobbing and weaving. Oh, these are seed cucumber. Okay. Cut, cut, cut, cut. Okay, so we um those olives I had to put back in the refrigerator because those Greek black olives were not pitted and I was not going to stand around and try to pit them. But I looked in the pantry and we have some colon olives here and some bigger. They almost look like they’re um Spanish olives, the big green ones. So, we’re going to put these in. And they’ve got a nice brine to them. You can taste that kind of vinegar brine. It’s awfully good. So, we’ll get these handled. That’s fine. Guess I wasn’t paying attention when I got those olives out. Sometimes you just get in a hurry. Okay, so put the olives in. Now, you can adjust your quantities however you want them. Um, I probably, if id had a bigger jar of olives, I’d have put more olives in, but that’s what we have and that’s what we’re going with. So, I’ve got my pasta over here. It has cooled and I’m going to put it in the bowl here. Now, it’s not the the brightest color you could use, too. That would really be nice. Uh just a plain the plain yellow pasta. But I had this downstairs and this is what we used. My hands and we’re going to mix this up. But first, before we mix it, we are going to do some feta cheese. Now, I buy the feta cheese crumbles at um either Sam’s or Costco, wherever I happen to go. We normally go to Sam’s because it’s closer. So, I’m going to put some Oh boy, look at those crumbles. Those are going to be good. I love feta cheese. The more cheese, the marrier, huh, Will? Yep. I like the bite feta cheese has. Now, this is what I found at the grocery store that kind of perked my interest. Simply vinegarette Greek dressing. And this happens to be Ken’s Steakhouse. And I just happened to notice that and thought, gee, that sounds good. Now, you can make your own. You can do olive oil and red wine vinegar. Throw some oregano and some salt and pepper in there and I think that’ll be quite tasty. But I’m going to use this if I can get it mixed up pretty well. See if we can get the a squeeze there. Let’s try and mix that up before we go any further. Now, the pasta will soak up some of this. I’ll tell you what, smells good and looks mighty good. Colorful. I like a colorful salad. Isn’t that nice? Will nice and pretty. You know, I think I’m going to throw just a little more dressing on there because, like I said, the um the pasta is going to soak some up. Pretty pretty. So there you have a Greek pasta salad. Now I’ll list the ingredients I used. Your quantities are up to you. You know, you may want a small pasta salad. You might want a twice this size if you’re having company. I’ll give you the basic ingredients and you figure out how much you want. But until then, if you like this video, give us a thumbs up. Have a happy 4th of July and above all have a safe 4th of July. Until then, blessings to you and your family. Have a good day. [Music] Glory. [Music]