A Side of Pizza Pasta

I'm not much of a Summer fan. The heat and humidity don't mix very well with my pasty, fluffy body. I have lived in the South all my life, and you'd think it wouldn't bother me very much anymore, but it's something that I really can't acclimatize myself to, no matter what. So, how do I survive?

By eating that. Cucumbers may be available all year long, but there is something about eating them during the Summer that makes them extra refreshing. The real trick is using Duke's mayonnaise. Nothing else even makes a cucumber sandwich worth eating...but that's just this Southern gal's opinion.

I have found myself falling prey to taking some of the online quizzes that I've seen posted on Facebook lately. On more than one of them, there was a question that asked what food you would choose if you could only eat that for the rest of your life.

Yeah, it's pizza. Without a doubt.
My husband would probably choose burgers, and I can appreciate that, but for me it's pizza all the way. Especially cheeseburger pizza. And double pepperoni pizza. With bacon.
Lots of bacon.

So needless to say that my ears perked up the first time I heard about pizza pasta.  After I read the recipe, I got hooked. I think the idea is brilliant, and I could kiss the person who thought of it! Now that said, while I love the idea of making it into the main dish, I think the idea of trying to incorporate pizza into side dishes is something I can really get behind. So I tweaked things a little bit, and made it a little lighter so I could serve it along with my dinner last week.  It turned out great!

So they make these really tiny sliced pepperonis for salads that would be adorable in this dish...if that kind of thing matters to you. It doesn't matter to me, and I didn't have them anyway so I used regular and chopped them into fourths. You can use whatever cooked pasta works for you. The popular choice from the recipes I looked at I used ziti because it's one of my favorites next to bowtie!

There's no fancy prep here with the exception of mixing all dry ingredients together first before adding them to the pasta. You basically throw everything into the bowl and then put it in the fridge so the flavors can "marry" for a while. The longer this sits the better it is, but I made it a couple of hours before dinner and it was fine. I did end up enjoying the flavors a bit more the next day, though.

This is a great side dish for anything from hot dogs, hamburgers and pork chops to just eating it by itself for lunch the next day. Not that I did that or anything. Especially not two days in a row. I'd never do that.

I probably won't do it again the next time I make it, either.
Except that I totally will...and I just might add in some crumbled cooked sausage.
*sheepish grin*