Pasta Salad

The day my MiL moved to town I had everyone who helped over to my place for food. I got to town an hour ahead of everyone so two thoughts immediately hit my brain. "MUST CLEAN!" "MUST COOK!" We had taken care of the cleaning the night before so to satisfy my brain I took a magic eraser to the trash can. To satisfy the cooking thought I made pasta salad.

Of course, by not planning ahead I was missing my usual vital ingredient; zesty italian salad dressing.

No problem! I'm trying to cook more from scratch so I haul out my old standby (The Joy of Cooking) and looked up salad dressing proportions.

Dressing ingredients:

a good balsamic vinegar
extra virgin olive oil
basil, oregano, and thyme from the garden
coarsely ground sea salt
freshly ground black pepper
a bit of whole grain wet mustard

And the rest of the salad ingredients were:

bowtie pasta
shell pasta
green olives
sliced carrots, from the farmers' market
garbanzo beans
diced onion


I really didn't have a lot in the house. Some celery, radish, and tomato would have been nice in it too.

Anyway, my Dad (the only real foodie to be there) loved the pasta salad and I enjoyed it for lunch a couple times this week.

Tomorrow I'm having my MiL over for dinner so I shouldn't cook anything too outrageous.