Zoo Pasta

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I haven't made this pasta salad yet, but when reading the recipe it was a bit different from what she did on the show I just watched. In the last 2-3 minutes of cooking the pasta, she added the peas and carrots for only about those 2-3 minutes. She also directly added the salad dressing to the drained pasta/peas/carrots and never reheated it as it calls for on the recipe posted on this site.
I just thought that was a bit unusual to change it that way and it would seem it would change the flavor (not heating it.

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Super easy to make, but the flavor is a bit lacking. I used carrots and green beans and opted for a Garlic Ranch dressing instead. It's a bit tasteless (probably because its meant for a child's palate and if you like actual flavor spice it up yourself. I added some additional onion powder, red pepper flakes, and more dressing until it was flavorful. For a child's dish it's probably 5 stars, for an adult I'd say solid 3 as the recipe stands, maybe even a 4 once its been seasoned to taste.

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I made this recipe as a cold pasta salad for my son's first birthday party last weekend. It got rave reviews... even from my hubby, who HATES cold salads!! (It tastes great warmed up, too!

I agree with the comments about the flavor; I would say to add more dressing to your taste.

It's such a simple recipe to make. I also used the tricolor pasta. One thing I would note is that I think Sandra Lee says it's 4 servings when used as 4 lunch portions. I thought it'd be 4 side order portions, so when I tried to multiply the recipe for all the people at the party, it would've been way too much. (I was going to multiply ingredients by 4 for 16 people, but I didn't need as much as I thought I would. I just doubled the recipe, and it was WAY more than enough. I used the Caesar salad dressing, which made it taste different from other pasta salads - in a really great way!

Even my baby loved this pasta salad! I would definitely give this one two thumbs up!!!

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We also used tri-color pasta. We added frozen peas and corn and used Newman's Own Caesar (the refrigerated jar version. It needed a little extra dressing, be other than that, it was a huge hit with both of my kids (ages 8 & 10. My 8 year old basically made it herself with a little supervision from me and was so proud of herself! Since it's a recipe intended for kids, it was not highly seasoned, but had a mild, very pleasant taste...plus, both my kids ate roasted red peppers because it was part of the recipe! We thought is was fun and a huge success.

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Couldn't find animal shaped pasta but used Tri-Color Fiori instead, very similar. This recipe was really very tasteless. I cooked the peas and carrots with the pasta for a minute as she did on the show and the hot pasta with the cold dressing was just off putting and really very bland. Might not be bad with some more flavorful ingredients.