Roasted Vegetable Pasta Salad

It's hot. It's really, really, really, really, really insanely hot here in Phoenix. I know, I know...it's Phoenix in the summertime, what do I expect, but it seems especially bad today. Maybe because the boy is driving me crazy so I'm extra cranky? I don't know, but we got home from his swim lessons 90 minutes ago and I'm still feeling hot from sitting outside for half an hour. Thankfully there are only two left to go!

Anyway, I somehow lost my meal plan for the week. I have this cool meal planning notepad, and I think when I tore off last week's menu, I must have torn off this week's too. So I'm trying hard to remember what all I had on there. I remembered tonight's and tomorrow's and Saturday's because we're having some friends over for dinner, but other than that I have no idea.

Awhile back my mom loaned me a vegan Italian cookbook she had. It sat on a table in my hallway for months. I'd occasionally flip through it and see something that sounded good, but I never made anything. I had slated for one night last week a pasta with roasted vegetables and some kind of garlic sauce, but then it was super hot the day I was going to make it, and the idea of roasting vegetables and heating up my house was more than I could take, so I scratched it and gave the book back to my mom. But, since I'd bought all the vegetables for it already, I figured this week I needed to come up with something that used them. So of course I turned to RecipeZaar.com. I first searched on "grilled vegetable pasta" because I figured I could slice the zucchini and yellow squash and grill them instead of roast them, but I didn't like anything that came up. So I tried "roasted vegetable pasta" thinking I could just grill the veggies if I found a recipe I liked. This one came up, and it calls for chicken, but I'm skipping that because I want a vegetarian dinner tonight. And I decided to go ahead and roast the vegetables now instead of doing it at dinner time. We'll have the pasta cold or at room temperature.

Roasted Vegetable Pasta Salad
Recipe #176124

* 1 1/2 cups yellow squash, julienne-cut
* 1 1/4 cups carrots, julienne-cut
* 1 cup sliced onion, vertically sliced
* 1 cup zucchini, julienne-cut
* 1 cup red bell pepper, julienne-cut
* 1 tablespoon olive oil

Vinaigrette
* 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
* 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
* 1 tablespoon olive oil
* 1 1/2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
* 1 garlic clove, crushed

Remaining ingredients
* 1 (12 ounce) box ziti pasta, cooked
* 2 tablespoons fresh basil, chopped
* 16 cherry tomatoes, halved
* feta cheese, to garnish

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Combine all the vegetables with the olive oil, toss gently to coat. Bake at 450 for 20 minutes, turning occasionally; cool.

Combine all ingredients for the vinaigrette, with a whisk.

Combine the roasted vegetables, vinaigrette, pasta, fresh basil, tomatoes and feta in a large bowl; toss gently to coat.

*****

See, I'm even too hot and lazy to go back and format the recipe into my usual style. It's just too hot. I'm trying to cut back on the amount of TV the boy watches, but I'm thinking if he asks for a show or movie after naptime, he'll get one because it's too hot to come up with anything else to do. Hey, I never said I was trying to win Mother of the Year! ;)

I took out the parts of the recipe for the chicken since I'm not using it, but check out the original recipe if you're interested in including it. I think the only change I'm making is that I'm going to roast the tomatoes along with the zucchini and squash. Oh, and I'm leaving out the carrots and red pepper because I don't have a red pepper and don't feel like doing the carrots. I wish I had a red onion to use for this, but alas I don't. I'm hoping this is good and no one scoffs at the idea of having a glorified pasta salad for dinner.

*****

This was yummy!!! The husband was pretty skeptical when I told him about it and flat out said maybe he and the boy would have hot dogs leftover from the BBQ on Sunday. I was a bit offended to say the least. The husband said it was better than he expected and he really liked it, although I don't think he approved of it as a main dish. The boy did not like it at all. He took a few "no thank you" bites and then had a hot dog instead. At least there's a lot left for me for lunch over the next couple days!