This Orzo salad is one of my absolute favorites! When I stumbled across this recipe on Pinterest I thought it looked so good. I did leave out a few things from the original recipe because Mike and I aren’t fans of olives or feta cheese, but if you want to see the original recipe you can find that HERE. As I was making our weekly menu this week I got really hungry for this meal and I thought this would be the perfect dish for this series. Technically I think this is supposed to be a side dish, but I love it so much that I double the recipe and just make it as a meal…this usually leaves me with leftovers, which are just as good if not better than the first time around. You could always pair it with grilled chicken or pork. Really the sky’s the limit! I highly recommend this recipe! Let me know if you try it. I’d love to hear what you think!

Mediterranean Orzo Salad with Grilled Vegetables:

Mediterranean Orzo Salad with Grilled Vegetables:

• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 zucchini, cut into spears
• 1 yellow squash, cut into spears
• 1/2 red onion, sliced into rings
• 1 baby yellow bell pepper, sliced
• 1 baby red bell pepper, sliced
• 1 baby orange bell pepper, sliced
• Sea salt and freshly cracked pepper, to taste
• Dash of oregano, to taste
• 1 cup of orzo, cooked per instructions

Coat a large grill pan with cooking spray over medium high heat. You could probably throw these veggies on an actual grill as well… less dishes to clean and I bet it would give them a great taste! Slice the vegetables then drizzle the olive oil over them and season them with oregano, sea salt, and freshly cracked pepper, to taste. Toss to coat evenly. Place into the hot grill pan and cook for 3-4 minutes on each side until tender. The onion and bell peppers may take longer than the zucchini and squash. Set the vegetables aside to cool before dicing. Also, the recipe calls for baby sweet peppers but I couldn’t find any at the farm market this week so I used half  of a full pepper for each. You can’t really mess it up :)

As the veggies are cooking, cook the orzo in salted water per instructions then drain well. Pour the cooked orzo into a large bowl. Add the diced grilled vegetables. Drizzle the vinaigrette onto the mixture then toss to coat evenly. Taste and re-season if needed. Serve immediately and enjoy! So easy and so good!!