Thursday, September 30, 2010

Spinach and Orzo Salad

I'm a little obsessed with Whole Foods Orzo Salad with Spinach. Ever since a coworker told me about their 2 for $5 lunch special, I walk to Whole Foods at lunch and get 2 small containers of the Orzo Salad with Spinach. It makes me sad when they don't have it.
While inventorying our pantry for our clean out the pantry challenge, I discovered a box of orzo. Hm, could I make my favorite salad at home? I did some internet searching and discovered a lot of folks like that salad and a lot of them had made similar salads at home. I used this recipe as a base. The only addition I made was adding these purple bell peppers. I stopped at our local farmer's market to see if they had anything for this salad and found these:



I found it even stranger that they were green inside!
I liked the addition of another crunchy item.

So I used:
one box of orzo (prepared as directed),
1/4 of a large red onion, diced
2 small purple peppers, diced
2/3 of a bunch of spinach, chiffonade
8 oz of feta, cubed
1/2 cup of Kalamata olives, roughly chopped
1/2 cup of pine nuts
2 tbs of red wine vinegar
1/4 of olive oil
2 tbs of the juice from the Kalamatas
Salt and pepper to taste

Once orzo is cooked and cooled, mix everything together. Start with small amounts of oil and vinegar. You don't want everything to be soggy, just lightly dressed. Serve cold.
This recipe made enough for 12 so it would be great for a potluck or picnic. You can use any type of pasta noodle here, so what ever you have on hand would work. I did see someone sub out feta for tofu if you wanted to make it vegan.

4 comments:

  1. That looks like something I could dig into riiiight now! I love feta cheese in pasta salad-- plus those peppers look righteous!

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  2. I love the colors in your dish!!

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  3. Looks absolutely delicious!

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  4. I love that salad at whole foods! That and their spicy eggplant are probably my favorite things to pick at the salad bar.

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