Summer Picnic Salads

I just love summery side dish salads. I also love hearty salads where you can have the leftovers for lunch and feel perfectly satisfied. Here are a couple that you might like. I know we sure liked them!

Tortellini Bacon Broccoli Salad

Ingredients:

2 (9 ounce) packages refrigerated three cheese tortellini
1 pound bacon
4 cups chopped broccoli
1 pint grape tomatoes, halved
2 green onions, finely chopped
1 cup bottled coleslaw dressing

Directions:

Cook the tortellini according to the package directions, drain, rinse with cold water, and refrigerate until cool, about 30 minutes.

Place the bacon in a large, deep skillet, and cook over medium-high heat, turning occasionally, until evenly browned, about 10 minutes. Drain the bacon slices on a paper towel-lined plate. Chop the bacon into 1/2-inch pieces while still a little warm.

Place the tortellini, bacon, broccoli, grape tomatoes, and green onions into a salad bowl. Pour the dressing over the ingredients, and toss lightly to coat. Chill in refrigerator before serving.

Source: Allrecipes.com, submitted by MostAwesomeChefEver. You can find it here.

Notes: This was so good. I loved it...and it most definitely made for awesome lunch leftovers for me!

Picnic Potato Salad with No Mayonnaise

Ingredients:

2 pounds small new potatoes, quartered
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 cup chopped onion
3/4 cup crumbled blue cheese or gorgonzola cheese
2 tablespoons chopped fresh chives

Directions:

Place potatoes into a large pot and cover with lightly salted water; bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until tender, 10 to 15 minutes; drain.

Whisk vinegar, olive oil, mustard, basil, salt, and pepper together in a large bowl; add the potatoes and onion. Toss gently to coat. Let stand until cool, about 30 minutes.

Fold blue cheese or gorgonzola and chives into potato salad until blended.

Source: Allrecipes.com, submitted by It's A New Day. You can find it here.

Notes: We had a bad experience with blue cheese recently where we tried a buffalo chicken lasagna recipe that we were excited about that basically just tasted like blue cheese. Now, we all love blue cheese, but that was just too much. So, we have decided to tone it down lately and we have been opting for gorgonzola in place of blue cheese. Prepared with the gorgonzola, I absolutely loved this recipe. it was so good. I couldn't get enough of it. The lelftovers were also a good lunch for me!