A colorful medley of garden-fresh vegetables is tossed in a light oil and vinegar dressing to make this tangy pasta salad a surefire hit at your next gathering.

Potluck Pasta Salad

We love pasta salads as the weather warms up. There aren’t many things that beat having a meal ready-to-go in the fridge on a hot summer night.

Part of that is the fact that we lived in Phoenix for so many years. When it’s 108 degrees outside and muggy from a thunderstorm, you learn to eat as light as possible. And, you keep the oven off as much as possible.

No Mayo Pasta Salad

This recipe is great for a summertime gathering because it is simple to make, loaded with flavor, and you don’t have to worry about it sitting in the sun. No mayo is perfect for a potluck pasta salad.

If you’ve been here for very long, then you’ll know that I’m an equal opportunity employer of mayonnaise. I like a mayo free pasta salad with a bright vinaigrette just as much as I enjoy a creamy pasta salad with mayo.

You’ll love that this Italian Penne Pasta Salad can be set out and then forgotten about. There are no worries about a no mayo pasta salad spoiling in the sun.

This Garlicky Spinach Pasta Salad and this Summer Israeli Couscous Salad are excellent salads that are perfect for summer.

This California Spaghetti Salad is loaded with many of our favorite flavors too. And this Strawberry Spinach Pasta Salad is a must any time you have fresh strawberries around!

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Ramen Chinese Chicken Salad

Crunchy ramen Chinese chicken salad is made with rotisserie chicken, three kinds of cabbage, carrots, green onions, mandarin oranges and a sweet tangy homemade salad dressing.

The chicken is completely optional, but I can’t ever make it without it. With the added protein, it makes a great lunch or main dish for dinner. I especially love the chicken marinated in The Original Japanese BBQ Sauce. It’s being sold everywhere lately, but I first found it at Costco. It is so good and goes perfectly with this salad! Using a rotisserie chicken makes it so simple so there’s minimal cooking!

This oriental chicken salad is a great dish for a potluck.  I remember when I was like 15ish, I went to a camp at a college. I stayed the first night with a girl I had grown up with and her roommates. We went on a little BBQ/picnic and a girl made a salad with crunched up top ramen noodles. I thought it was so weird. Years later my girlfriend gave me this recipe and it’s delicious. Very light, but flavorful and those ramen noodles add the most amazing crunch!

Ingredients for Ramen Chinese Chicken Salad

At first glance, this is going to look like a long list of ingredients, but I promise that it’s worth it! The flavor is so bold! Here is what you will need…

• Rotisserie Chicken: you can cook your own chicken breasts or buy it precooked
• The Original Japanese BBQ Sauce: this is optional, but it adds fabulous flavor to the chicken

Dressing

• Peanut Oil: the base of the homemade salad dressing, adds a subtle nutty flavor
• Peanut Butter: you’ll want creamy peanut butter
• Sugar: balances the acidity of the vinegar
• Rice Vinegar: adds tanginess to the dressing
• Soy Sauce: grab low sodium so the dressing doesn’t get too salty
• Sesame Oil: the tiniest bit adds the most delightful nutty flavor

Ramen

• Butter: used to toast the ramen noodles
• Ramen Noodles: crunch them up so they are bite size and ditch the seasoning packets
• Almonds: sliced and toasted with the ramen noodles
• Sesame Seeds: you can use black or just regular seeds and they also get toasted with the ramen

Salad

• Napa Cabbage: has a slightly sweeter flavor and the leaves are tender and great for eating raw
• Green Cabbage: chopped thin and adds to the base of the salad
• Red Cabbage: chopped thin and adds a bright pop of color
• Carrots: shredded on cheese grater
• Green Onions: adds that delicious onion flavor but it’s more subtle
• Mandarin Oranges: drained and left whole

This is meant to be just

Welcome to the weekend, my friends! It’s mid-June and the weather is about as perfect as it could possibly be. (Not something I recall ever saying in the summertime before we moved to Ohio.) We still have chilly mornings and glorious afternoons and evenings.

Even after 4 years of living here, I still have moments of, “How awesome is it that I get to wake up in my favorite place on earth every morning?!” It’s a gift I don’t take for granted.

ON THE BLOGS this week: Filled with Italian sausage and shredded vegetables before being fried crisp and golden brown, these Italian egg rolls are a fun and unexpected twist on pasta night.

Fluffy Italian rice cooked in chicken broth and then tossed with warm butter and generous herbs makes a terrific side dish for any meal.

This pepperoni pizza grilled cheese sandwich is a fantastic treat, loaded with savory slices of pepperoni, gooey mozzarella, and fresh basil.

Garden-fresh tomatoes, fragrant basil, and a creamy, cheesy topping make each slice of this old fashioned tomato pie a joy to eat!

Tender vegetables are breaded and broiled to perfection with plenty of buttery garlic and lemon in this crispy buttered zucchini and summer squash.

Tender crisp green beans are sauteed along with tomatoes, onions, jalapenos, and plenty of spice in these flavorful Mexican green beans.

Warm berry sauce poured over cold ice cream is one of my favorite desserts. I make this sauce year-round and every time I serve it, it gets raves. This fruit sauce might be the simplest recipe I keep in my dessert recipe notebook. I scribbled it out on a scrap of paper almost 25 years ago while I was visiting a friend.

Creamy sweet vanilla ice cream filled with crunchy, nutty grape nuts? Yes, please! This grape nut ice cream has been an absolute win with family and friends.

Juicy sweet blueberries are topped with the warm, cinnamon-kissed crunch of a buttery oat topping

Hi friends! Happy Friday! What’s going on this weekend? We’re heading off on a trip – check out IG stories for all the details over the next couple of weeks – but it will still be blog business as usual over here. I have a new beauty DIY post coming on Monday!

It’s time for the weekly Friday Faves party! This is where I share some of my fave finds from the week and around the web. I always love to hear about your faves, too, so please shout out something you’re loving in the comments section below.

Friday Faves 6.16

Community Detox Coming July 10th

If you feel like you’re ready for a little reset, join us for a community detox starting on July 10th. This is my 4th time completing the detox and it’s something I do quarterly in my routine to help remove toxicities, restore deficiencies, improve my sleep, energy, and digestion. I always feel like a million bucks when it’s over!

SO many of you joined me last time, so I wanted to invite you to join in if you’d like to go for another round. The fun starts July 10, so you can order your kit now and you’ll be ready to go. (Use FITNESSISTA10)

Here’s more about this 7-day detox:

– It’s a liver-based detox to help reset your body, provide a break from digesting heavy foods, and potentially help your body eliminate toxins that we accumulate from our environment. It includes functional medicine ingredients and Ayurvedic herbs to support phase 1 and 2 liver detoxification.

– It’s nutrition-focused. It includes the POWERHOUSE Daily Nutritional Support powder (which I’ve had in my smoothies for many months and notice a difference in how I feel when I drink this smoothie), and meal guidelines for the remaining meals. The goal is to NOT have your body depleted of nutrients during the process.

– It can potentially help with weight loss along with anti-aging, and total body wellness.

– It’s only 7 days! When I first started working with a naturopath (back in the old days! It was like 2010), he had me do a month-long deto

Creamy sweet vanilla ice cream filled with crunchy, nutty grape nuts? Yes, please! This grape nut ice cream has been an absolute win with family and friends.

We’ve eaten it scooped into bowls, ice cream cones, and melting over a fruit crisp too. It honestly doesn’t matter how you serve it, it is sure to disappear quickly.

Jamaican Grape Nut Ice Cream

This ice cream has officially blown my mind. Quite a few years ago, a reader asked me if I had a recipe for grape nut ice cream and I filed that request away under, “I should research that.” And then promptly forgot.

While I was playing with cereal milk ice creams recently, I remembered this one and after just a wee bit of research, I learned that grape nut ice cream is a Jamaican ice cream that is basically vanilla ice cream with the addition of crunchy nutty grape nuts.

Grape Nuts Ice Cream

I couldn’t even fathom how that was going to taste, but like always, I was game for trying it. Turns out that grape nut ice cream is crazy good. Crunchy, nutty, bits of grape nuts cereal are scattered throughout every bite of creamy rich ice cream.

A friend tried this one when I made it and said it reminds her of cheesecake crust in the way it remains crunchy throughout the ice cream. The cereal does soften (compared to the level of crunch grape nuts have straight out of the box) but there is a decidedly firm crunch throughout the finished ice cream.

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