Egg Noodle Salad

Meatless nights are becoming more frequent in our house and we're loving it. We're not vegetarians, but recognize the benefit to our bodies and the planet in not eating meat as often. I've been inspired lately by coming up with ways to use things in my cupboard that I seem to always stare at but never use and combine it with my fresh goodies from the market. In this case it was egg noodles that I had bought a long time ago for turkey soup, which never seemed to happen.

This one was outta the park in terms of success. So good that now I need more of the stuff I didn't use for ages! LOL.

Egg Noodle Salad

1. Cook your egg noodles according to package instructions and set them aside in a large bowl. If you want a cool salad, you can cool these in the fridge for later or the next day. Just toss with a little bit of olive oil to keep them from sticking.

2. Cut up the veggies you want to use into nice bite sized pieces. Use a spiralizer if you have one, that's fun! In this recipe I used all raw beets, patty pan squash, and carrots. If you want to add onion or garlic, cut dice those up finely, unless you're into big chunks. Nothing wrong with that either!!

I like a lot of flexibility in my cooking and recipes, so use what you like and what you have on hand. There are no rules as to which raw veggies you can use, we all have different taste buds.

3. Add a protein. Here I added black beans. Any beans will do, you could also add hard boiled egg here if you wanted instead. Canned organic beans work, rinse them first. Ideally you would make a big batch of beans from dried before hand and have them ready to go for meals like this. But one step at a time. I still used canned beans every once in a while when I'm crunched for time.

4. Add goat feta or your cheese of choice.

5. Drizzle with extra virgin olive oil and salt & pepperize to taste. Want to live a little (longer)? Add turmeric too.

6. Toss it all together until evenly coated.

If you're wondering why I don't tell you how much of each item to use, it's because I want you to learn to experiment and you'll start to discover the same basic recipe can be made totally different just by changing the veggies you use, the protein, the spices, even the oil. And if you make too much, just save it for lunch or dinner the next day! (don't try to eat it all LOL) Make too much on purpose to save yourself time later. Use your eyes and the size of your bowl to determine how much of each item. You want an array of colours like you see in the picture.

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