Pasta Salad

On a HOT Summer day there is only one perfect cool meal…Pasta Salad!

In a perfect world I would use my grill’s side burner to boil the water for the pasta…but it was too hot outside to do even that. The area was knocking on 100°· So I cooked it indoors. Key here is to cook the pasta WAY before dinner so it can get cool. I boiled mine before dog-park time, iced it down, washed it with cool water, applied some olive oil, tossed it and put it into the fridge.

At this time, put EVERYTHING into the fridge, including canned items like black olives and fresh items like onions and bell peppers.

I used Farfalle (bow tie pasta) but normally I use tri-color Rotini. I just wanted to do something new.

Ingredients:

1 diced red bell pepper
1 diced red onion
1 sliced & quartered English cucumber
1 shredded large carrot
1 lb of cubed roasted chicken (2 slices at #12)
1 package of cubed Colby jack (my one laze moment)
6 oz of Sopessata sausage
One cup or so of Parmigiano Regiano, shredded fine
1 can of sliced black olives
About a cup of sliced peperoncini
About 1/4 cup of crumbled feta

From the garden:
Sweet Basil
Oregano
Thai Basil
Dill
Flat Parsley

The dressing was:
Olive oil
Red wine vinegar
Grey Poupon
Dry oregano
Black pepper
Sea salt

I did have about half a cup of Italian Dressing, so I added that to the mix. It added slightly to the complexity, but the olive oil dressing carried the day.

Everything got tossed and head to the fridge. While dinner melds, I’m going for a swim in the pool!

This will provide lunches on hot days for the week. Of course you could leave out the cheese and the meats and have a great salad, and most likely not notice the difference.