Crunchy Veggie Pasta Salad

Hi!  Let's get the weight loss, or lack of, out of the way first so we can get to the food pics.  I'm still at 240 and have been here for a month. 

We went to Helen this past weekend.  I got on the scale Sat. morning before we left and was 238.  Then went out of town and ate restaurant food for 2 days...hello sodium!!  I got back on the scale Monday morning and was back at 240.  I'm assuming it was the same this morning...I don't know...I'm really tired of looking.  Thinking about giving my scale a 2 week vacation.

Helen is a little town in North Georgia made to resemble a German town.  Here are a few pics of the shops, etc.:

Ok, so you get the idea.  It was a relaxing weekend.

I was thinking today that I need to get some more fresh veggies in so I looked around on some blogs.  I found a Creamy Dill Macaroni Salad on Danica's blog...listed on my sidebar.  She's listed on my sidebar.  I intended to follow her recipe exactly but ended up making some changes...basically just added more veggies and a little less pasta.  It is absolutely delicious!  I also tried out Biz's breakfast sammies this morning that I keep seeing on her blog.  I used a 100 cal Thomas english muffin split in half w/ some Boar's Head low sodium ham, fresh spinach, 2 eggs and some thick slices of tomato.  So, so good!  Here's some pics:

Breakfast sammies

Look at all that deliciousness:

red bell pepper

grape tomatoes

yellow mini sweet pepper

red onion

red cabbage

cucumbers

carrots

celery

This is Crunch Heaven

Oh wait...forgot the fresh chopped spinach!  I threw in 1 oz. of sliced black olives, too.

Ahh....that's better.  One little problem...running out of room in the bowl to put in the pasta!  Danica's recipe called for 8 oz. of mini shell pasta.  I used 6 oz. just to cut down on the calories a bit.  But then I added 1.5 Tbsp of bacon bits...because everything tastes better with bacon. :)

The sauce for her recipe calls for 1/2 c. lite mayo, which I used, but I used more Dijon Mustard and red wine vinegar that it called for to give it that extra twang to go with my crunch.  There's also some garlic and dill weed.  I also tossed in 1/3 packet of Hidden Valley Ranch dressing packet to give it more ranch flavor w/o using the bottled dressing.  And a dash of salt and pepper to finish it off.

Our buddy Kevin came over for dinner and he likes veggies like I do.  He said this was delicious.  I think I caught him licking his plate.

Here's my dinner plate...grilled chicken breast, grilled asparagus and crunchy veggie pasta salad.

I'm going to make that Paleo sweet potato and sausage breakfast casserole soon that I've been seeing around...maybe tomorrow morning!!  I'll post pics of it when I do.  :)