Chicken Pasta Salad

I love Chicken Salad sandwiches – so I really enjoyed this pasta salad with the same flavors. My mom made this for a family gathering and I couldn’t stay out of it. Of course when I tried to make it for a party, it didn’t quite taste as good - but that is because I didn’t have all of the ingredients and so I substituted.

INGREDIENTS

3 cups bow tie (farfalle) pasta

1 (16 ounce) bottle bottled coleslaw dressing

1 cup mayonnaise

4 cups cubed cooked chicken

1 1/2 cups seedless green grapes, halved

1 1/2 cups seedless red grapes, halved

2 cups thinly sliced celery

1/2 cup thinly sliced green onions

2 cups cashew halves

Salt and Pepper to taste

DIRECTIONS

1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add pasta and cook for 8 to 10 minutes or until al dente; drain, and set aside. (Not an Al Dente fan - I usually cook mine for about 12 min )
   
   
2. In a medium bowl, whisk together coleslaw dressing and mayonnaise.
   
   
3. In a large bowl, combine pasta, chicken, grapes, celery and green onions. Stir in dressing, add salt and pepper if desired and mix well. Place the salad in the refrigerator to marinate for 2 hours, or overnight. Mix in cashews just before serving.
   Serve cold.

I don’t love onions – but these are pretty mild so I didn’t mind them. When I re-made the salad I didn’t add them and I think they needed to be there. Also I didn’t have enough mayo and so I added more coleslaw dressing and this made the salad a little too sweet. The other substitution I made was to use almonds instead of cashews – while almonds are tasty, they will never be as good as cashews.