 This time of the summer, something amazing happens when you mix fresh cooked pasta with fresh seasonal vegetables from your own garden or from the farmer's market. And I wanna show you one of my favorite salads this summer. I start with couscous. And if you've never used couscous before, when you go to the store, you might find two different kinds. One is the traditional couscous, just tiny little granules, and actually it's just semolina, little granules of semolina that have been steamed and dried. But when I make salads, I like to use the Israeli couscous, and you can see that they're much larger than the traditional couscous. Sometimes it's called Kazba couscous. It cooks in about eight to 10 minutes, so it's real fast. Now, when I'm making my fresh vegetable and couscous salad, I cook my couscous, and while it's cooking, I mix a real light and zesty vinaigrette. So I've already mixed up some olive oil with fresh lemon juice, a little bit of honey and some Dijon mustard to give a little tang, a little bit of salt and pepper, and I like to mince up some shallots. Shallots are used a lot in French cooking, and this one's really a large one. A lot of times they're much smaller than this, and they're kind of a cross between garlic and onion, much milder than a regular yellow onion. So I like to use those in my dressings. So I've got that mixed up, and then once the couscous is cooked, there'll be no water left in the pot. So I put the hot couscous, I don't rinse it, I put it right into my salad bowl, and I add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil so that it doesn't stick together. And then I get my other things ready to go while the couscous is cooling a little bit. So to finish off my salad, I'm going to add some red onion, probably about a cup. I've already chopped the red onion, about a cup of chopped cucumber, and I like to use the seedless cucumber because they just hold together really nice in the salad, and there's not those big seeds like the regular cucumbers have. And then I check a couple of big tomatoes, fresh tomatoes, chop them up. I'll add those to the salad, and I'm going to toss it a little bit, and then pour in the rest of my vinaigrette, and you might not need all of it, and that's fine because this is great on just a nice fresh green salad too. So just do it to kind of make sure everything gets coated really well with the vinaigrette, and then I'm going to add some sliced spinach, fresh spinach. Now, once I have my spinach mixed in, I'm going to put this in the refrigerator, and I find that it's best the next day. It has great flavor the next day, and then right before I serve it, I sprinkle it with a little bit of toasted pine nuts for a little bit of extra nutty flavor. Delicious salad. I'll have the recipe on our website. So enjoy pasta and vegetables together this summer. I'm Sue Dodin sharing good food for Good Life 365.