Seafood Salad - Gluten Free

So I went to Sams Club yesterday with the Gramps, just to look around.  Usually what we do is this:  I look around for 10 minutes and then I'm done and ready to go, but instead of leaving I spend the next 2 hours walking around the store trying to find my little white-haired husband who apparently can turn invisible in the aisles.

While I was hunting him down, I noticed their imitation crabmeat was in some new packaging.  It used to be packaged in a tray with the other seafood, and had an expiration date that was almost always 20 minutes after the time of purchase.  I don't know about you, but we can't use up 2 pounds of imitation crabmeat in half an hour.  But now, it is in one of those hermetically sealed packages and the expiration date was in NOVEMBER!!  Well, I couldn't help but grab a package!  When I got it home, I put it in the refrigerator, and afterwards my husband kept reminding me that I had 2 pounds of imitation crabmeat in the fridge that needed used up.  No matter how many times I told him the expiration date was NOVEMBER, he could not let it go.

So I made a seafood pasta salad for lunch that turned out GREAT!  I used gluten free cavatelli pasta from Meier, their own brand, and it was really good!  I will definitely go get some more of that!  Thank you Meier!  Love that store!

We ate it for lunch two days in a row, and made quite a dent in the HUGE bowl of seafood salad that I made.  It's really yummy!  The dressing ingredients may seem like a lot, but pasta tends to soak up liquid as it sits.

You could easily substitute regular pasta shells for the gluten free pasta if you don't need to eat gluten free!

Here is the recipe:
For a printable version please click HERE.

If you try it, I hope you like it!

Chicken Caesar Pasta Salad (Gluten Free)

I love to make salads in the summertime for dinner.  This one is definitely a keeper!

I found the original recipe on Melanie Makes.  You can find the recipe for her Chicken Caesar Pasta Salad here.  It is so yummy!  

I made a few changes, as I seem to be doing quite often these days.  Here are the changes I made to her yummy recipe:

First, I used gluten free corkscrew pasta from Ronzoni.  I cooked it to the firm stage, which was 8 minutes.  It came out perfect for the salad.

Second, I used bottled Caesar Salad dressing.  I really was going to make the homemade Caesar salad dressing using the recipe from Melanie Makes, but at the last minute I chickened out (no pun intended) because of the raw eggs.  I am sure it would have been just fine, but with my luck I would have gotten sick.  So I decided to go on the safe side.

Third, I chopped the salad and mixed it all in a bowl.  Her presentation was much prettier, I must say! But since I made it for just my husband and myself, I didn't see the need to impress him! Teehee!

Please visit Melanie Makes for her yummy Chicken Caesar Pasta Salad recipe, as well as for her recipe for homemade Caesar Salad Dressing.

If you would like my adapted recipe, here it is:  (for a printable copy, please click HERE.)

I hope you enjoy it as much as we did!