Good Eating Tuesday: Two Bean Pasta Salad

I always like trying new summer pasta salads and found this one on Pinterest:
 Two Bean Pasta Salad!

It involves mixing chick peas & kidney beans with pasta for a higher protein/veggie salad.

This recipe came from a blog, but I felt it didn't have enough dressing. Even waiting to the last minute to add it, the pasta still absorbed and it tasted a little dry. 

So, here, I've doubled the dressing ingredients, to give you extra to add to help prevent the dry-out!

It's a pretty salad and I did add extras like grape tomatoes and carrot matchsticks because I like a lot of color and I didn't have any spinach and I don't like black olives. I also used colorful veggie pasta.

(Photo my own)

Two Bean Pasta Salad

2 cups cooked pasta, any kind

1 can red kidney beans, drained & rinsed

1 can chick peas, drained & rinsed

1/2 cup sliced black olives

1/4 to 1/2 cup diced red onion

1/2 cup fresh Kraft Parmesan or Romano cheese

1 1/2 cups fresh spinach, chopped into small bits or substitute other veggies you like: thawed frozen peas, carrot matchsticks, sliced grape tomatoes, green onions, cucumbers, etc.

Dressing:

1/2 cup fresh lemon juice (= one lemon juiced lemon usually)

8 Tablespoons Balsamic Vinegar

4 Tablespoons Olive Oil

1 to 2 garlic cloves, minced

1 teaspoon of sugar

Dash of salt & pepper

Directions:

Cook pasta according to directions, then drain in colander and cool pasta with cold water. 

While pasta is cooking, combine, dressing ingredients and put in frig to chill. (Good idea to mix a chopper or blender or food processor to emulsify the oil & vinegar.)

Pour cooled pasta into large bowl, add beans, onions, sliced olives and other fixin's and stir together. 

Stir in only half of dressing amount and chill the salad, so it can absorb the flavor until serving time and save the remaining dressing to freshen salad with just before putting on the table.