Impress your valentine this year with an easy Valentine’s Day pasta salad filled with salami, cheeses, vegetables, and adorable heart-shaped pasta from World Market. This simple make-ahead side dish is the perfect surprise for your sweetheart on Valentine’s Day. 

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I might have a slight obsession. It’s not a bad obsession by any means, but something that I look at every time I’m in a particular store and I always have to buy it.

Do you have an innocent obsession too? Is there something that you love so much and you can’t help but want to buy it every time you see it? Please say “yes” so I don’t feel like a total crazy woman over here!

Lucky for me, my obsession only costs $2.99 plus tax. And sometimes, I even get it ON SALE! 

Want to know my guilty pleasure?! Don’t get too excited because it’s really nothing to write home about but here it goes…

I’m completely and totally addicted to seasonal shaped pasta from World Market! 

I can’t walk into the store without buying a package, or two, for every season throughout the year. Part of this is because World Market does such a great job of displaying them the minute you walk through the doors. Darn you, World Market!

So far, I have added two different recipes on the blog with these seasonal-shaped pastas. Over the summer, I used the Stars & Stripes variety to make a delicious classic macaroni salad. For Halloween, I made a heartwarming chicken noodle soup with my pasta find!

I made a festive baked ziti for the holidays using the Christmas variety of pasta but I didn’t blog about it. Shame on me, I know!

And I never got around to making something with the winter variety so they’re still sitting in my pantry. I told you it’s a sickness, people!

Just the other day, I saw one of my friends on Instagram share that she found Valentine shaped pasta at Aldi. My heart skipped a beat and I realized I didn’t check World Market to see if they had a Valentine variety of pasta for the season. What a slacker! 

Because I’m always looking for an excuse to walk around the store, I headed over to my local World Market in hunt of my favorite little pasta. To my pure delight, World Market had the heart-shaped pasta I was looking for. I grabbed a bag and headed home to make it into something spectacular for my family to enjoy!

Although I already have a couple of cold pasta salads on the blog, I still felt the urge to transform my Valentine pasta into something along the same lines. I love making cold pasta salads because you can make them ahead of time and they get even better as the days progress. 

Case in point…my Mediterranean Orzo Salad and Stars and Stripes Macaroni Salad. I highly recommend both of them for a potluck, BBQ, or just to keep in the fridge as an easy lunch side dish!

This school year, my son Zach is doing something called Dual Enrollment. He’s a junior in high school but only attends it for his two band classes and then does all his main course work at the community college. 

The whole concept is really awesome. He goes absolutely free. Books and parking are all included. By the time he graduates high school next year, he will most likely already have his AA degree! 

In any event, I’m sharing this because Zach’s school schedule is all over the place this year. Unlike a normal 7 am – 2 pm school day, he’s commuting back and forth from the high school and college on a daily basis. 

Because of this, he is now eating lunch at home every day. Some days he only has about 15 minutes to eat before he has to head back out to one of his classes. With such a little time frame, it’s important to have easy meals for him to grab so he doesn’t go to class on an empty stomach.

Like I mentioned before, pasta salads are great options to have in the fridge. Not only do they get better the longer they sit, but they are easy to customize to your family’s likings.

Plus, it’s a well-balanced meal! You’ve got your carbs with the pasta, you can add a protein like salami, some cheese for your dairy and then vegetables and possibly fruit to round it all out. It can’t get much better than that!

I am going to share with you the recipe I made for my family but please feel free to use it as a guideline for your own pasta salad creation. Substitute whatever ingredients you see fit for others that you know your family will enjoy more. 

I only caution you to try and stick with the same measurements when it comes to substituting ingredients if at all possible. The recipe will still be amazing regardless, but you might have to adjust the amount of Italian dressing you use based on the number of ingredients in your bowl. With not enough ingredients you’ll use less dressing and with extra ingredients, you’ll use a little more! I hope that makes sense…

Easy Valentine’s Day Pasta Salad

World Market Valentine pasta, 1 red bell pepper (diced), 1-pint grape tomatoes (halved), 2.25 oz. sliced black olives (drained), 8 oz. salami (cubed), 8 oz. pearl mozzarella cheese, 7 oz. Pecorino Romano cheese (cubed), 1 – 1 ¼  cup Italian salad dressing

Begin by cooking your pasta according to the directions on the package. This step is extremely important because if you overcook the pasta the shapes will turn into complete mush and be unrecognizable.

As soon as the pasta is finished, strain it and rinse it under cold water to stop the cooking process.

Dice up your red bell pepper.

Halve your pint of grape tomatoes too. 

Drain your black olives.

Cube your salami and Pecorino Romano cheese and unwrap your mozzarella pearls.

Add all the ingredients to a large container. 

Measure out a cup of Italian dressing.

Carefully add the heart-shaped pasta to the container with the other ingredients and pour the Italian dressing over all the ingredients.

Gently stir all the ingredients together and allow the flavors to marry together for at least two hours in the refrigerator.

Right before serving, give the pasta salad another good mix. If it seems a little on the dry side, add the additional ¼ cup of Italian dressing to the pasta.

All that’s left to do now is enjoy it! 

This easy Valentine’s Day Pasta Salad is a cinch to throw together and so very delicious! I hope you and your sweet Valentines fall head over heels in love with it just like our family did. Hugs and kisses to you!

Want to remember this? Post this recipe for Easy Valentine’s Day Pasta Salad to your favorite Pinterest board!

 

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