I LOVE This Salad!!! #lowcarb

Needed to make something for a family reunion yesterday, so have been thinking about it all week. This is what I came up with. It was very pretty yesterday, not so much today so no photo. People, I noticed, ate it in small quantities, like a relish. Today, though I am eating it by the bowlful! 2 large zucchini 2 large crookneck squash 1 medium sweet red onion 4 roma tomatoes (or cherry tomatoes, if you can afford them) 8 oz hard sausage carrot slivers (I bought already "shredded" to save my back) balsamic vinegar garlic clove, crushed olive oil 2 drops SweetzFree S&P freshly shredded parmesan cheese If I'd have been willing to pay $3.48 for a pint of cherry tomatoes I would have halved them to use, but I wasn't, so I cleaned out 4 roma tomatoes and chopped into small pieces - 16 pieces per tomato - then tossed them with olive oil and balsamic, seasoned, and roasted until nice and sticky. While they were in the oven I washed the squashes and made noodles out of them, using a veggie peeler, and discarding the seedy middles when I got down that far. I put the noodles into a large mixing bowl. Next I quartered the onion and cut thin slices, so to create lovely purple slivers, and put those into the bowl. I tossed 4 oz of carrot slivers into the bowl, after rinsing and patting dry. Then I diced the sausage (I got a semi-spicy summer sausage) into small (1/4-3/8") squares, and added those to the bowl. When the tomatoes were done I put the whole pan of them into the fridge to cool, and made my balsamic vinaigrette with the olive oil, balsamic, garlic, S&P, and sweetener. (When I tasted it, I just needed something to bring out the flavor of the vinegar, and just a couple drops of the SweetzFree worked quite well!) When the tomatoes were cool, I used a rubber scraper to add not only the tomatoes, but also the lovely sweet juices from the pan into the bowl. Then I tossed everything together, adding S & P to taste. I took the vinaigrette in a separate container as it was a 3.5 hour drive and I didn't want to lose the lovely vibrant colors as it traveled (in the cooler with ice of course). We tossed about 3 Tbs of the vinaigrette with the salad right before serving. And then I realized I forgot my cheese! But it was beautiful and tasted fresh and delightful anyway. And what I brought home of it, I'm eating today - WITH the cheese. The cheese really does make a difference, even just a little sprinkle over the top, so don't forget the cheese like I did :). I had one dish of it for breakfast and am eating another dish of it for lunch. With the sausage and the cheese, it is a very satisfying meal!