As I am living on my own away from home, I find myself missing the meals that were ‘staples’ at my house growing up. I was needing to make something easy to take for lunches which got me thinking back to what I would have taken to school for my lunch and as the final weeks of class are slowly coming to an end, I have been reading my past blog posts and have caught on to a pattern which is that I have been not necessarily trying new recipes but instead I have been making the recipes that I miss most now that I live away from home. To be honest, I am okay with that and am happy that my learning project has went that way! I figure was I am able to nail these ‘staple’ foods from my family that I might be able to start trying new things.
With all of that being said, it leads me here to last weeks Learning Project Post when I made my Mom’s Macaroni Salad recipe. Last week was super busy for me as I worked just about everyday as well as I tried my best to balance all of my classes. I needed something where I could prepare it one night and eat it for dinner a couple times later in the week and this was the perfect fit for that.
When I came up with the idea, I was originally going to try a new macaroni salad and I did some searching and found a couple of different Pasta Salad Recipes and then was going to compare the two after but decided to just stick with my Mom’s Recipe as I had everything ready to go in the fridge, thank you to the Food Prepping I did on that Sunday.
My Mom’s recipe has been the exact same for as long as I can remember. I could not tell you one thing that has changed over my lifetime of eating it and I think that that is why I enjoy making my families recipes so much!
There’s one thing about this recipe… there is no accurate measurements….actually there is no measurements at all…
If you have been following me along with me and my Learning Project, you should know by now that my family is not one to follow a recipe.
So here are the INGREDIENTS for my Mom’s Macaroni Salad…
Ingredients:
- Some kind of Pasta (usually she uses macaroni but I did not have any)
- Cucumbers
- Peppers
- Celery
- Carrots
- Mustard
- Mayo
- Thousand Island Dressing
- Salt + Pepper
- Dill
Step #1: The Pasta
The first thing that I started off with for this recipe was cooking the pasta. I usually use macaroni for the salad, hence the name, but I seemed to have been out of it which is shocking. I always have extra bags of it. Anyhow, I ended up using rotini noodle instead. To cook the pasta I boiled a pot of water and put in the desired amount of noodles and cooked them, drained the water when they were cooked, and set them aside to start cooling off!
Step #2: The Veggies
As my noodles were cooling off, I then started to dice all of my vegetables. If you have read my past blog post about Food Prepping, you would know that all of my vegetables have been washed and prepared so all I had to do was dice them up and add them to my noodles. By doing this, it has saved me so much time, not only with this meal, but everything that I have made since then. Once the they were diced, I added them to the noodles.
Step #3: The Sauce
For this next step, there is not much instruction I can give you and I am sorry for that. After I had added my vegetables to the bowl, I soon realized that I could not mix in the veggies so had to move everything to a bigger bowl. Once I had a bigger bowl, I mixed the vegetables together and started adding the mustard, mayo, and thousand island. When I had messaged my Mom for her recipe I had no idea what the sauce consisted of and then when she had told me, I was a little shocked and was almost turned off of it… However I just drizzled a lot of mayo, quite a bit of thousand island, and then a little bit of mustard then quickly mixed it together so I would stop thinking about the three completely random things I just put in my pasta.
The Finished Product
After the sauces were mixed in, I added the salt, pepper and dill weed and voila… my Mom’s Macaroni Salad recipe was complete and it was tasty!
Although it did not taste exactly like hers, it was pretty darn close and lasted me and my boyfriend about 3 days as we each took a serving of it to work for our lunch.
If any of my fellow followers have a pasta salad recipe that they like, drop it in the comments and please share with me. I love taking salads for lunch and am going to try making a different one again next week.
Thank you for tuning into last weeks Learning Project Blog Post and I hope you have a great weekend!
Ciera
That looks delicious Ciera! I would not be able to keep myself from eating way more than any person should….. I totally empathize with the homesick hungriness and think it’s pretty cool that you are finding and making your favorite family recipes. Pasta salad is one of the best things ever when it is done right, and it looks to me like you knocked it out of the park! Keep on doing what you’re doing, your blog is great 🙂
Ian
That looks very yummy, I love pasta salad!
I made one last week that was similar to yours but I added diced-up ham and cheese. The dressing I used was mayo, pickle juice, a little bit of sugar, and dill. I also didn’t use exact measurement but I added them all into a bowl and then mixed it till it was runny enough to be added to the pasta.