All-American Italian Pasta Salad

This is Memorial Day weekend and it seems fitting to serve good ol' American home cooking, so at our house we're going to start off the weekend with Italian Pasta Salad, made in my good ol' American kitchen.

Here's my recipe.

All-American Italian Pasta Salad

16 ounces rotini pasta
8 ounces mozarella cheese chunk, cut into small cubes
4 ounce can sliced black olives, drained
2 small zucchini, cut into chunks
1 package pepperoni; cut slices in half if they're big
1/4 to 1/2 cup chopped red onion
2 medium tomatoes, cut into chunks
1 bottle of your favorite Italian-style dressing

Cook the pasta as package directs. Drain and rinse with cold water; drain well. Combine all the ingredients except dressing in a large bowl. Add about three-quarters of the bottle of dressing and stir well. Cover the bowl and chill for at least a couple of hours for flavors to blend. Before serving, add the remainder of the dressing and toss. (The pasta tends to absorb the dressing, so it's nice to save that last little bit for serving time.) Makes a nice, main dish pasta salad. Serve with garlic bread.

During this Memorial Day holiday weekend, don't forget to fly the flag to honor those who have died in service to our country. If you need to review a little history to remember what Memorial Day is supposed to be all about, I would suggest this page from history.com.

Have a wonderful red, white, and blue weekend!

Do Not Adjust Your Set, or When to Serve Jell-O by Candlelight

I was hungry for fruity Jell-O the other day and found fruit cocktail on sale while shopping at the local grocery store. I happily grabbed a couple of cans, looking forward to soothing my craving, then headed to the gelatin aisle.

Now, fruit cocktail just screams “red Jell-O” to me, and that was going to be my dilemma, deciding from among the various red flavors. Would I choose cherry, the perennial favorite, or would raspberry win out? And what about the strawberry, or even the cranberry if it were in stock this time of year? I rounded the corner of the gelatin aisle and, lo and behold, what did I see but a sale sign. Sales are good and their accompanying signs always catch my eye. This one was no different but, interestingly, there was only one sign and it was below the lime Jell-O, the only flavor on sale. Well, now I had a dilemma. It’s pears that scream “green Jell-O,” but I had chosen the fruit cocktail. Do I mix and match instead of color coordinate, or do I return to the canned fruit aisle and pick up pears? Was the sixteen-cent markdown on the green Jell-O enough to justify going against tradition and altering my usual fruit/Jell-O pairings? Not surprisingly, the sales won out and fruit cocktail with green Jell-O it would be.

This afternoon, as I began to prepare the fruity Jell-O to accompany the chicken and noodle casserole for dinner tonight, I opened the cans and knew even before I added the boiling water to the gelatin that I had a mis-match situation on my hands, but the decision had been made, the cans were open, and my anxious taste buds (which don’t have eyes) had made up my mind to go for it.

It’s the little cubes of orange peaches that clash the most, I think, but I know that even though it’s going to look a bit unusual, even teetering on the edge of unappetizing, my Jell-O fruit salad is going to taste just fine. I think we will dine late tonight, and by candlelight.