Picnic Pasta Salad and a Special #PastaFriday Event

So last Friday I announced that I’ll be posting a pasta recipe every week. Today I’ve decided to make it an event. Why not?! So if you are a food blogger and you love pasta, this can be the space for you. To participate in this weekly event, on a Friday or during the weekend, I invite you to write a post on your blog accompanied of course by a pasta recipe. What you need to do next is very simple:

1. Include a link to your post in a comment on my post for that week.
2. Include a link to my post in your own blog post. Don’t reblog the post. A simple link will do.
3. If you use Twitter promote your post with #PastaFriday so everyone will be able to see it.

Easy. This event will run up to October 2^nd, at least for the time being.

Now onto this recipe which I have promised you ages ago but never got round to it. It’s an off-the-cuff one simply because everyone does pasta salad differently. Everyone comes up with many variants most of the time. I have to be honest here: there has been a time (I suspect that it’s not over) that this became one of my regular go-to suppers as it’s easy to prepare and good for transport. Also it’s a good one for making use of things I just want to use up. I open the fridge and voila you have a meal. I have made it during these hot months for friends coming at the house at the last minute, especially during those intermittent weeks where I skipped my otherwise regular grocery shop.

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Fusilli with a Simple Tomato Sauce

I spent the last thirty minutes or so reorganising my photos into ingredient folders, if that makes sense. I just have too many, but it’s been a very interesting exercise, because now I’m aware of some old dishes I’ve been wanting to publish for ages. So for now, every Friday is Pasta Day. Lately my least busy day, at least for the summer, has been Friday. Having said that, today has been quite a hectic one and all I want to do right now is eat, watch a movie and sleep. I have sadly finished all episodes of Castle. Sad days indeed. I had a very light lunch today so now I’m feeling ravenous. I don’t like heavy meals in the evenings though. I’m a light sleeper by nature, on the verge of being an insomniac, so anything heavy will make me sick. However I find that one of the gentlest things to eat at night is pasta. I know, I know, it may seem weird to you and it was to me too, the first time I read that. I mean, how was that even possible? I read an article a few years ago written by a chef. He said that he eats a small portion of pasta after a late night at the restaurant because apparently carbohydrates are one category of foods that are easiest to digest. I can’t remember where I read this but all I can say is that, for me, this works. I cut down quite a lot on pasta and bread these past few months, but once a week it’s pasta day in my house and that, my friends, makes me more than happy.

Fusilli with Mandarins and Basil

Before coming across this recipe in Jack Monroe‘s book, I would never have thought of pairing pasta with mandarins. (There’s no need to tell you again how much I like Jack’s book. You can read all about it in a previous post.) I was almost about to say that I never had anything sweet with pasta. Then I remembered I actually did! I’m getting older…