Ina's Crunchy Noodle Salad

If you recall back to my "Ina Turns to the Dark Side" post a few months ago, you will remember that Ina Garten (a FoodNetwork chef) doesn't make hardly any vegan food on her show, The Barefoot Contessa, but when she does, I make the recipe and it's always fantastic.

So, upon watching a recent episode, I just HAD to make the Crunchy Noodle Salad she had prepared. Peanut butter and noodles...what could be better than that? To make my life easier, I made the dish as a quick make-ahead dinner that I could just pop out of the fridge and eat. It turned out amazingly good! What I did was make the dressing in the full amount (I didn't cut it in half or anything), stored it in a jar, so I could toss it with single-portions of noodles and veggies whenever I want an easy meal.

I did make a few slight changes to the recipe. First, 1/3 cup of soy sauce seemed a bit much, so I cut it back by about 2 tablespoons. I omitted the salt and pepper in the recipe (salt AND soy sauce...yikes!) I used maple syrup instead of honey, and canola oil instead of the ambigious "vegetable oil." Of course, I used whole grain noodles also.

Make this! Also, as the name would suggest, the actual noodles of the salad are not crunchy, it is the veggies that are crunchy.