What a weird day! My internet is AWOL so I’m writing this in a Word doc for posting later. WAH! Where is my IT support? I’ve had a busy morning –  I went for a run with “Runner In Training” (RIT), then I was met Cheryl Harris of Conscious Creations for a “practice” walk in preparation for our Walking Women Mastermind, and then I taught yoga at Beloved. Whew! Now I have a big stretch of time to “get stuff done.” So what do I do? Make pasta salad of course!

The Pasta Salad That Grew and Grew
What started off as a benign pasta salad has turned into a Monster! I started in this bowl:

Then, as I kept adding veggies I had to transfer to a bigger bowl:

Finally I ended up with this (!):

Yikes!

Here’s what I made – just keep in mind that this made a TON of pasta salad!

Pasta Salad
Makes a billion servings

Ingredients
10-16 oz dry short pasta – I used spirals – cooked according to package directions and cooled. (Use 10 oz for higher veggie to pasta ratio)
3 large carrots, diced
2 large red peppers, diced
½ large red onion, diced
2 cucumbers, diced
1 15oz can artichoke hearats, diced
6 oz sundried tomatoes
½ cup toasted pine nuts
¼ cup fresh basil, chopped small
¼ cup fresh thyme, chopped small
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil (don’t skimp here – used the best quality you can get!)
juice of two oranges
3-5 tablespoons red wine vinegar (you may want to use a little more or less so start with 3 and then play around with the taste)
salt and pepper to taste

Directions
Combine pasta, veggies, and nuts into a super huge bowl. Toss to mix well.
In a small bowl, mix together the remainig ingredients. Pour over the veggies and enjoy!

Anyone want to come over for pasta salad?

RIT and I went on our second run today. This is only the second time she’s gone running (well, with me) and this is what we did:

5 minutes walk
20 minutes of alternating 1 minute jog with 1 minute walk
5 minute walk cool down.

That’s it! This is what we did on our first day out too. This might not look like much but when you are just starting out this is plenty! If at the end you feel like you could have run more, that’s terrific. The idea is to be injury-free and feel good. We’ll up the mileage and pace as we progress.

RIT reports that she feels really good after her run this morning. Yay