I was looking for a salad recipe to take to a potluck and found Betty Crocker’s Layered Mexican Party Salad that was just about right.  It already had three ingredients that are recommended on the MIND diet (leafy, green vegetable; other vegetable; and beans), but I wanted to make it over to include more.

It was easy to use olive oil for the vegetable oil. The biggest problem was the Suddenly Salad Pasta salad mix.  I have never purchased this product, but I didn’t think it comes in a  whole grain.  Since that, I found that there is a Southwest Grains version that is based on brown rice and whole grain quinoa. However, it looks like it has lots of ingredients (intended and unintended) that I might not want to use it anyway.

Anyway, I tried to duplicate the Suddenly Salad Classic Mix using whole grain rotini. I cooked about 6 oz to the al dente stage. I made the flavoring for it by mixing dried parsley, garlic powder, and pepper into the olive oil, with the cumin and water and mixed that into the rotini.

I didn’t use refrigerated guacamole. I mashed one avocado and added a bit of lime juice instead. It was ok, but I didn’t take it much. Next time, I will either add 2 or 3 avocados or omit it altogether since it didn’t add much to the taste.

I have to admit that I did add the cheese, so that would have to be my cheese serving for the week. Ouch!  I did omit the chips. They just get soggy anyway.

The result was “OK,” but it was a little flat. The leftovers were good when I added some Italian salad dressing and taco sauce. Next time, I will add more spices, maybe a taco seasoning mix or my recipe for the home-made version of taco mix. Also, it was maybe a little heavy on the rotini. I think 4 oz would have been plenty.

I still think this is a good recipe to make-over. With the olive oil and whole grain, it would hit 5 of the 10 recommended foods on the MIND diet.

I need to make this again. Next time, I will try to remember to take a picture!