A Light Summer Pasta Salad and a Breezy, Beachy Table Setting

You may remember my saying I’m not much of a cook, but I have a few easy, quick go-to recipes and summer is my favorite time because I like to use simple, fresh ingredients. Today’s salad is an easy, summer pasta salad. It’s pretty flexible in that you can use whatever vegetables you like and have on hand. This time around I mixed quartered grape tomatoes, fresh corn sliced off the cob, carrot slices, and broccoli with tri-colore spiral pasta. The dressing, and I don’t measure anything, is a mixture of olive oil, brown mustard, and balsamic vinegar (cider vinegar would work too) whisked together with a little cracked pepper tossed over the vegetables and pasta and then layered over a bed of mixed leaf lettuce.

The table setting is the Robin’s egg blue linen cloth I’ve had on since spring with my wooden tile place mats, a Johnson Bros. ironstone plate and a pink glass rimmed soup/salad plate (all thrift store finds). To make it beachy, I’ve added braided rope napkin rings and little resin? star fish (cheap-o bins at Michael’s), a big blown glass decanter that reminded me of a bubble, a few wooden candlesticks, a gnarly branch that looked sort of drift-woody to me, and a teal green plate shaped like a fish (all thrift store or found items).