4th of July BBQ Dishes!

I hope everyone had a fun and safe 4th of July!!

We hosted a BBQ at our house with friends and family, it was a blast!

Here are two of my healthy dishes that I made:

Quinoa Pasta Salad:

Ingredients:

-1 box quinoa pasta

-1 can large black olives 

-1 pint cherry tomatoes 

-1/2 jar pesto sauce (or you can make your own)

I have always been a fan of pasta salad and for this one I was able to use two of my other favorite things: pesto and black olives! 

First cook the pasta,strain, and store in the fridge to cool it down. 

While cooking and cooling, chop up tomatoes and slice the black olives.

Once pasta has cooled, toss everything in a bowl with the pesto sauce and mix it up! Super simple!

Here's what I used for the pasta and sauce:

 

I like the quinoa pasta as a gluten free alternative because it provides more protein then some others like rice pasta etc. 

The pesto sauce was great and definitely a time saver to buy pre-made! But if you can/want to you can always make it home made. 

What was also great was we used the extra pesto sauce to make pesto chicken on the grill!

Edamame Salad:

I have posted this one before :) so the full recipe can be found in a earlier post. 

For this batch I ended up using fresh chives instead of cilantro, because the store was out! It turned out great and added some good crunch and flavor! It's fun to improvise with ingredients if what you need isn't always available!

These are both super simple dishes that work great for any get together! Also, they offer a healthy choice for those of us trying to stay on track, but still enjoy real food! 

What did you make for the 4th!?