Macaroni Salad

Last week, we had a party at work. I won't go into the geeky, librarian-ish, too-much-information details about librarians throw parties. Suffice to say we had a Very Good Reason.

So one of the bosses sprung for 9 slabs of ribs. Before he turned away to allow me to make politely silent gagging noises at the thought of our entire ROOM smelling like bbq for hours (I hate barbeque), he told me that there would be ribs sans-sauce in case anyone would prefer that. I knew from the tone that I'd get a couple of cracks about the idea of someone eating ribs without sauce, but I didn't care. I love ribs.

However, I knew what the pot-luck part of our lunch would feature. Standard bbq fare - cole slaw, potato salad, greens, beans, cornbread. Here we go again with my crazy food preferences, but yuck, yuck yuck yuck.

So I made a macaroni salad that I would like. And I hoped that if I didn't tell anyone that there wasn't a lick of mayo in it, no one would ask.

They didn't.

Macaroni Salad Without A Lick of Mayonaisse.

1 lb elbow macaroni, uncooked
3/4 cup low-fat three-cheese ranch salad dressing, divided
3/4 cup fat-free sour cream
1 cup chopped celery
1 cup chopped bell pepper

Cook pasta, drain and cool.

Whisk together 1/2 cup of the sald dressing and 1/2 cup of the sour cream.

Mix pasta, dressing and vegetables together until everything is well coated.

Refrigerate overnight, or until just before serving. Whisk remaining salad dressing and sour cream together; stir into pasta.

Notes:
There's an endless variety of vegetables that would go in this. I went with the green stuff I had in my fridge, but be creative!

I HATE HATE HATE ranch dressing, ranch flavored chips, and the very idea of a "ranch" flavor in general. This dressing tastes NOTHING like ranch - I think they just put that on the label to make it more marketable. And so this has taken the place of my beloved Parmesan-Romano salad dressing which is no longer to be found.

At the time, I really wished I had put some boiled egg in here, but I had three separate people tell me they were glad they finally had some macaroni salad without eggs. I guess everyone's crazy in their own little way, huh?