This is a recipe that’s 15 years in the making!
Now, it’s barely a shadow of the recipe I saw when I was much younger and newly out on my own, but I still look back fondly on the original.
It started in a Taste of Home Magazine Pasta Cookbook back in 2006 or 2007. I worked at a grocery store at the time as a cashier and I saw it at checkout while we were slow, so I decided to thumb through it. I’m fairly certain, that at the time, it was the recipe on the cover. I bought the magazine and made the recipe according to the directions. Well, at first I did.
The original recipe was good and everyone that tried it enjoyed it, but I decided I wanted to experiment with the ingredients and the preparation. I’m so glad I did, because here we are all these years later, and this is easily my most requested dish.
My family asks me to make it for every holiday; I’ve had a couple friends ask me to make it so they could take it to parties; I even have a nephew who has asked for it as his birthday gift on more than one occasion. I’m getting ready to have my first grandbaby at the end of February 2024 and I have no doubt I’ll be making it for the baby shower.
I also love how good it is at bringing everyone together—if I want to get all my family and friends together in the same place, all I have to do is just make this pasta salad and tell them all what time to come over. It’s like my own personal homing signal!
— Amanda Moore, Sur La Table Culinary Website Producer
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