It's sweet. It's tangy. It's Creamy Macaroni...er.. Bowtie Salad.

Ah ha! The first recipe, and one that I just got done making. In the future I'll be taking step by step photos, because it is my feeling that you can never have enough food photos on your blog. Plus, I secretly want to be Ree Drummond from The Pioneer Woman Cooks.

So. It's a summer staple. Macaroni salad. I'm always tempted to buy those tubs of macaroni salad at the supermarket, but then I look at the fat content and a part of my insides dies a little. Not that I'm normally preoccupied with such things as fat content... but I like to pretend I am when I'm being judged by fellow grocery shoppers.

Anyway. Why buy store bought when it's so easy to make yourself? Like seriously, I had the dressing for this done in the time it took to boil the pasta. No big deal. I also tweaked the recipe a bit... one of the major problems being I had no elbow macaroni. So.... bowtie pasta it is!

What you'll need... (this is what I used for a 4 serving recipe, just FYI)

- 1 and a 1/2 cups of uncooked pasta
- 1/3 a cup of mayo - I used light mayo. It's all about fat content.
- 1/4 a cup of sugar
- 1 tablespoon of distilled white vinegar
- teaspoon or so of yellow mustard - I used spicy brown, because I'm a rebel.
- pinch of salt
- pinch of pepper
- 1/4 of a sweet onion, finely diced
- 1 stalk of celery, finely diced
- some diced carrot... I legitimately used 4 baby carrots. I have issues.
- bout a 1/3 cup of frozen peas

Ok so the original recipe called for green pepper, and didn't have peas in it at all. It also listed the carrots as optional, along with pimentos. I have never bought pimentos, so those were out, and I went to chop up some green pepper, only to find it was mushy. Does this happen to anyone else, or is that just me? How did I go grocery shopping today, then go to cook only to find out I'm out of elbow macaroni and I only have one squishy pepper. Epic fail Courtzilla, epic fail.

Anyway.

- Now. Boil the pasta in salted water. Cook until just tender.
- Meanwhile, combine all of your dressing ingredients in a pretty big bowl. Add in all the chopped veggies into the dressing... clearly just put in whatever veggies you've got on hand. I chop everything really fine because big chunks of texture creeps me out.
- Fold that all together. Once the pasta is finished, drain it. I ran mine through with cold water so it wouldn't be hot when you added it to the mayo... icky.
- Throw the pasta in with the dressing and mix.

At this point if you're me, you decided you wanted to add peas because it's not green enough and you've got authority problems. I just put the frozen peas in a coliander and ran them under hot water until they thawed out, and tossed 'em in the pasta.

Cover with cling wrap or whatever, and throw into the fridge! Let it mingle there for like an hour or so, although overnight is best. This just gives everyone in the bowl a chance to get to know each other and start making friends.

Devour.

If you wanted to reduce the calories even more, use a multigrain or wheat pasta, and you can switch out the sugar with splenda. Actually the sugar could be toned down a bit too, this is a pretty sweet dressing.

It's that easy, folks. This is so easy, I almost feel bad posting it. Definitely not enough disaster or destruction going on.

<3 Courtzilla