Say that five times fast!<\/p>\n

I have been quite the social butterfly this weekend! I had book club Friday night, Bunco last night, and this evening we’re going to a barbecue with some of Mr. Spice’s friends. It never ceases to amaze me how quickly our weekends get filled up in the summer.<\/p>\n

Anyway, it’s been nasty hot here in GA so I thought I’d bring something that could be served cold. Pasta salad was my first thought and I looked around at some different recipes. And then I realized I was making this WAY more difficult than it needed to be. I have a tendency to do that.<\/p>\n

As you know, I’m all about saving time and taking shortcuts when I can without sacrificing on taste. I think you’ll agree that not only does this go together really quickly, but the flavors all go together as well. I didn’t really measure anything here, so adjust quantities as you want.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Presto Pesto Pasta Salad<\/span><\/p>\n

1 box pasta — I used tri-colored rotini
pre-prepared pesto — I used Classico pesto
Mozzarella cheese, cut into tiny cubes
sliced black olives, cut into halves
fresh tomatoes, diced
fresh parsley for garnish (optional)<\/p>\n

Boil pasta in salted water. While pasta is cooking, cut up cheese, tomatoes, and olives.<\/p>\n

Drain pasta and immediately rinse in cold water until pasta cools off. Put in large bowl.<\/p>\n

Add pesto and coat pasta thoroughly. Add pesto as needed to taste. Then add cheese, olives, and tomatoes, and toss to combine. Sprinkle parsley if using. Refrigerate for a couple hours before serving.<\/p>\n

You can play around with this however you want to. Add more veggies, add meat, whatever you want. I made this without meat since I wasn’t sure if there were any vegetarians coming tonight, but next time I might add some grilled chicken or chopped salami. If you want to make your own pesto, go for it, but you know how lazy I am!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Say that five times fast! I have been quite the social butterfly this weekend! I had book club Friday night, Bunco last night, and this evening we’re going to a barbecue with some of Mr. Spice’s friends. It never ceases to amaze me how quickly our weekends get filled up in the summer. Anyway, it’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[27,42,2,11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.spicesbites.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.spicesbites.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.spicesbites.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.spicesbites.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.spicesbites.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.spicesbites.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.spicesbites.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.spicesbites.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.spicesbites.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}