Over the weekend, summer started. Well, not exactly. But our summer social life revolves around our neighborhood swim club and we got the first phone call of “Hey, we’re lighting some coals and cooking out tonight at the pool. Want to join us?” I had some of those great apple-chicken sausages. I had some sugar snap peas for munchies, some olives… but I wanted to bring a side dish of some kind to share. I decided to make a pasta salad. I cooked up a package of flavored spiral pasta from the Mendocino Pasta Company. I set aside a bit of it for the kids to eat plain so the amount of pasta is guestimated. The pasta is flavored, which added just a bit of a kick to the salad. I’ve read about adding some red pepper flakes to the water as you cook the pasta but I haven’t yet tried that.
Pasta Salad
Ingredients
- 8 ounces pasta, cooked and cooled
- 1 red pepper, sliced thinly
- 1 yellow squash, quartered lengthwise and sliced
- 1 6 oz can olives, sliced
- 1 10 oz frozen peas
- 4 ounces Cheddar cheese, cubed
- 8 ounces oil and vinegar dressing I used Kraft Zesty Italian
Instructions
- Cook up the pasta and drain it.
- Add all the other ingredients and mix well, then chill a few hours.
This was a hit with the adults but the kids preferred the plain pasta.
I’m glad you liked it!
8/15/05 This salad is awesome, easy, filing, colorful and taste’s wonderful!!! Thank you.