Zucchini Orzo Salad

Making lunches for the week ahead of time has been a real life/time saver for me. Since I am the rare soul that brings her lunch to work every day of her life (everyone else I know goes out!) I have to come up with new, creative dishes to pack! For a while now P and I have only been eating meat for dinner and since he is fine with grilled cheeses and PB&J's everyday it has been pretty easy to please him. Me on the other hand would prefer a change, and likes variety. Scoping out vegetarian blogs and recipes has helped! Its amazing how many ways you can add protein to your diet without eating meat! It also helps that I used to cook for a vegetarian and have a number of recipes up my sleeve. I thought I would share a recent lunch that was pretty easy to whip up and will definitely be making again!!

Zucchini Orzo Salad

Ingredients:
For the Salad:
1 medium sized zucchini cubed
1 small red onion sliced in thin rounds
2 Roma tomatoes cubed
handful of roasted and chopped almonds*
sprinkling of veggie cheese (of course you can use regular if you prefer!)
about 8oz orzo pasta cooked
1 C raw spinach leaves

For the vinaigrette:
4 tablespoons red wine vinegar
2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon salt
freshly ground pepper
1 teaspoon sugar
1/4 cup olive oil

Directions:
1. Make the vinaigrette. Whisk together the vinegar, mustard, salt, pepper, and sugar. Stream in the olive oil, whisking vigorously, until combined.
2. Saute in a bit of olive oil the zucchini and onions until soft and yummy. I sprinkled a little salt on them during sauteing process.
3. Toss the pasta, zucchini and onion mixture with the dressing and add the uncooked tomatoes and spinach leaves.
4. Separate in your different bowls if packing for lunches (I was able to make 4 lunches out of this recipe).
5. Top with almonds and cheese. When you heat salad at lunch time the cheese melts, tomatoes and spinach soften perfectly. I imagine you could eat this cold as well! :)

*after eating my first helping of this salad I noticed that the crunchy almonds almost tasted like bacon bits! They were a VERY good, healthy touch to add flavor.