Pasta Salad

With a Memorial Day barbecue on the horizon I went in search of this recipe as I can remember enjoying this particular pasta salad immensely. Hopefully I remember to take a picture before I eat every last bite of this... 

• 1 box mini fusilli pasta (or whatever pasta salad shape floats your boat) 
• 2 large cucumber (cut into thick slices and then quartered) 
• 2 container grape tomatoes (cut in half or thirds) 
• 2 bunch asparagus (trimmed and cut into bite-sized pieces) 
• pitted Kalamata olives (cut in half)
• 1 container crumbled goat cheese 
• some salad dressing, mine was called Tuscan-style Basil & Herb... again, whatever sounds good to you 

1. Cook the pasta, when there is 1 to 1.5 minutes left of cooking time, throw the asparagus into the pot with the noodles. When time is up, drain (don't rinse). Pour out the noodles & asparagus onto a cookie sheet with sides and let it cool. 
2. Chop the cucumber & tomatoes as needed then sprinkle (they say a little, I say generously) with salt. 
3. When pasta is cool, mix together with cucumber/tomatoes and goat cheese. The interwebs say don't put on dressing. I used a little bit to get the noodles unstuck to ease the mixing. 
4. Then, just before you eat it, add a little more dressing to taste. It came out really great! All veggies are crisp, I love the goat cheese (although feta would also work), and it feels very virtuous.