Beautiful Orzo Salad

Spinach and Feta and Pasta – Trifecta!

Tonight we are headed to the Middle School Winter Sports Banquet. This “banquet” phrase is used loosely as it is really a big potluck affair. We are asked to bring a main dish and a side or dessert to share. I’m grilling a few chicken breasts to cut up and also making my favorite orzo salad.

I love orzo – of course, it’s pasta! If you have never tried orzo, it looks kind of like rice but it is just pasta cut very small. I read many different recipes that called for whole wheat orzo but I could
never find it in town. I finally found it on Amazon.com. Did you know you could order groceries from Amazon? You get it in fairly large quantities but it keeps and you really can’t tell the difference in taste from the white pasta. Also, you won’t feel so guilty eating the enormous amount you will want to eat after trying a bite!

This recipe is based on one from my mom (a birthday wish here to my mom – love ya!). You can add cooked chicken the next day and make a great lunch. I have also made this salad with pomegranates instead of Craisins when the pomegranates are in season. Feel free to tweak the quantities given, this was the first time I actually measured anything! I felt I needed to be a little more quantitative when sharing the recipe.

Orzo Salad

Cook 1 and 1/2 cups dry orzo (try to find whole wheat) in boiling water. While the orzo is cooking, roughly chop 3 cups of baby spinach. Put this in a big bowl and top with 1 cup of crumbled reduced fat feta cheese. Drain the pasta when it’s done and put it on top of the spinach and cheese. Toss together so the warm pasta wilts the spinach and softens the feta. Add 1/3 cup of Craisins, 1/4 cup of toasted pine nuts, 1 tablespoon of olive oil and the juice from half of a lemon. Toss this all together and you’re done! Add a little salt and pepper if needed – taste first as the feta has a good bit of salt.

An addition to an earlier recipe… I remade the dark chocolate biscotti the other day for my kids teachers on Valentines Day. This time I added 1/2 cup of Craisins and they were even better than before!