Fresh Pasta Salad

I love this book. I've made dozens of recipes from this book before this personal challenge. Now I'm trying to go front to back cover of this cook book to taste the recipes I've missed. I have to say this recipe has some very misleading information.

1. The recipe calls for a 16 oz (by weight) package of rotini noodles to be cooked. That doesn't sounds so bad right? When you say package that means 16 oz. before its cooked. When noodles are cooked they double or triple they're size. If I was still running my little soup and sandwich stand that would be enough pasta for 2-3 days of orders. The recipe said it only made 8 servings or a small lunch for us.
   
2. The recipe called for 1 cup (8 fluid oz.) of Italian dressing. That half a bottle of the average table dressing you get at your local mega-mart. If you used 8 oz. of dressing to cover that much pasta you would be lucky if you got a enough dressing to thinly coat the noodle.
   
3. Finally the olives. the recipe called for 2 - 1/4 oz can of slicked olives. Note the dash. With the dash its reads as 2 separate 1/4 oz. can cans. You can't get cans that small of sliced olives.

So here are my suggested revisions if you want about 8 servings:

• Change the noodles to 8 oz. (by weight) uncooked pasta (about 2 cups)
• Eyeball the dressing to about 6-8 oz (just under a cup). Don't drown your pasta or it will become slimy by the end of the day. You can always add more later or have it setting to side your guests.
• Use 1 - 2 1/4 oz. can of black olives. I love black olives and I could just make a pasta sa
  
• Cut the tomatoes back by about half. Keep some extra ones around in case you need them.

I don't want you think that was a totally bad experience. I really enjoyed making the recipe. Its just that I have WAY to much pasta to eat before. Also, my wife doesn't like most of the ingredients in the salad so that leaves just little old me.

By now you're asking: how didn't he notice that the pasta was to much? Simply: I was exhausted when I made this recipes. You see that was the last recipe I made after:

• making breakfast
• running errands
• working in the garden and picking herbs and vegetables
• oven drying a couple of pounds of basil
• making stock with vegetable left-overs
• doing some clean up in the kitchen
• and making a corn casserole in about 5 hours.
  

I was zombie and didn't notice until I started cooking the rotini how much stuff I was making.

The taste is unique. The tomato sauce added quite a bit of zest to the salad. The spices weren't as strong as I had expected. The other vegetables are married quite well into the salad.

I wish I could post the whole recipe but US copyright laws prevent me from doing so. I really enjoyed the taste of the salad. This is one I plan on coming back to the future with my personal revisions.

8/10/2009 - Revisions were made make the article read better.