How To Make Pasta Salad

Pasta salad is the perfect thing to try “winging it” on in the kitchen. Like almost all salads, you can throw anything in there and it’ll be good. This is YOUR MOMENT. YOUR CHANCE to experiment. Be like Dr. Frankenstein but without all the lightning and stitches and stuff. Hell, maybe you’ll create a masterpiece of pasta salad and the family will sing your praises on high as they scarf it down, face in a wilted paper plate, shoveling it in with a spork, chugging from a plastic pitcher of Country Time lemonade. Wait. Spork? Not for my opus! Best to eat this pasta salad from an abalone shell , delicately, with a gilded fork and follow that with a rain-water spritzer. Just kidding. Ain’t no snobbery in pasta salad. It’s food for everybody.

So consider this a starting point. Like a diving board into a sea of possiblities. Sorry, I should say “pastabilities”. Ooh. Sorry again.

Ingredients

• 9 ounces dried, smallish pasta (tortellini, bow-tie, rotini, whatever you have) – cooked according to package and rinsed lightly with cool water
• 1 cup cherry tomatoes
• 1 cup diced red bell pepper (about half a large pepper)
• 1 small zucchini, shredded
• 4-8 green onions, roasted if possible, sliced into 1/4 inch pieces
• Optional ingredients: canned chick peas, spinach or arugula, grated parmesan, artichoke hearts, olives

Dressing

• 1 ounce red wine vinegar
• 2 ounces olive oil (or whatever you have)
• 2 teaspoons dijon mustard
• 1/2 teaspoon salt and pepper, each
• 1/2 teaspoon dried basil
• 1/4 teaspoon dried oregano and crushed red pepper, each

Put dressing ingredients in a jar and shake well. Set aside while you prepare other ingredients.