Super Easy Pasta Salad
12 oz. pasta
1/3 cup chopped olives with a little juice
3/4 cup Zesty Italian dressing
1/4 cup roasted red peppers
crumbled feta
cherry tomatoes

Boil pasta in salted water according to directions on package.

Add Italian dressing (I like the zesty kind the best.)

Chop olives and add to bowl along with about a Tablespoon of olive juice.

Add salt and pepper to taste.
Chop roasted red pepper and add to bowl along with a little juice from the jar.

(You can use fresh bell pepper if you like a little crunch.)
Mix well.
Add crumbled feta to taste and a few tomatoes to round it out.

This recipe is easly doubled, tripled, quadrupled:)

The story behind the recipe:

As spring came on and a promise of warmer (scorching hot) days, new ideas … and demands … continued to come in.
We made lots of pasta dishes for main entrees – lasagna, baked ziti, chicken spaghetti, spaghetti and meatballs, and the list goes on. We were so wrapped up in keeping our customers stocked with their favorites, that we barely had time to add new dishes or even think of what to add. Fortunately, there was never an end to suggestions.
Rebecca answered the phone to a customer in “desperate need of a cold side dish to feed a crowd.” She was having a gathering at her home and needed a large portion of a hearty side, but not potato salad, or green salad or a corn dish, or beans, or a bean salad, or …. Everything Rebecca suggested was met with a “No, not that.”
Finally, Rebecca was at the end of her rope. Long days made our ropes shorter.
She said, “How about a pasta salad. That would be perfect.”
Customer, “I don’t really like feta cheese.”
Rebecca, “Excuse me?”
Customer, “Feta cheese is always in pasta salad. I don’t like that.”
Rebecca, “We don’t have to put feta cheese in there.”
Customer, “Oh, good. I don’t like green onions either. Or celery. Or tomatoes. Or artichokes. ……”
The list went on.
Rebecca began to take notes. When the call was complete, she turned and crossed her eyes as she read off the list of what could not be included in the one side that was agreed to.
I’d never made pasta salad before. My family just never ate it.
JoAnne and Rebecca both gave their recipes, both of which had some forbidden items.
“When does she need it?” I asked as I looked in the ingredient refrigerator.
“Tomorrow morning.” Rebecca said. Then added, “And she needs a gallon of it.”
“Of course she does,” I snipped. “Last minute picky demands are the absolute best.”
I opened the refrigerator and grabbed a jug of Italian dressing. It had tomato bits in it, but not enough to notice. She was picky, not allergic to them.
I grabbed a couple cans of black olives off the shelf – something salty and with a bite to it. It wasn’t on the forbidden list.
It was late and I was tired. I wasn’t running to the store for the fourth time that day.
I boiled the bowtie pasta we had an abundance of and shot the salt to it.
After draining and dumping into a large mixing bowl, I added Italian dressing while the pasta was still warm. How much I don’t know, I just eyeballed it until it all looked coated. Taste test verified it was.

I chopped olives and added that along with some of the juice from the can.

A touch of ground black pepper and it was done. But it looked bland and needed another flavor. I looked in the fridge and saw a jar of roasted red pepper.

A quick glance of our ingredients not allowed verified that it was okay to add. I chopped that up and added a bit of the juice to the bowl. Taste test confirmed a winner.
I packaged it up and had it ready and waiting for our picky customer the next morning. Verdict? She loved it. Her friends loved it. It became a much-requested salad.

Two lessons learned.
One: Picky eaters rule. Sometimes they forced us to concoct something great.
And: Quite often, simple is best.

To make this even better, add cherry tomatoes and feta cheese, if you like that kinda thing:)