Greek Pasta Salad

Yet another work night for me.  Yet another triple-digit day.  This means I need some dinner for my family that is fast, cool, and can be ready whenever they want to eat.  Time for pasta salad!  I've been working on quite a few meatless meals lately and what I've found is: my husband prefers a little meat in his meatless meal!  I know this sounds contradictory, but what I mean is that he doesn't require a big ol' steak, he will happily eat something with just a tiny bit of leftover chicken, turkey pepperoni, bacon, whatever.  So, I guess what I'm saying is I have been doing a lot of "mostly meatless" meals!  Here's one of them that is a perfect prep-ahead or hot day meal (or both).  Also makes a good side dish.

Greek Pasta Salad

1 box of pasta, cooked and drained (I used Target brand roniti plus)
1 C light Italian dressing (Greece adjacent, right?)
1 large shallot or 1/2 small red onion, finely chopped
1 handful fresh spinach, choppped
1 handful pitted calamata olives, roughly chopped
1 handful turkey pepperoni, cut into ribbons
1 handful cherry or grape tomatoes, halved or quartered
1 can artichoke hearts, drained and roughly chopped
1 handful feta or goat cheese
1 handful fresh flat-leaf parsley
Lots of cracked black pepper

Assemble dressing and veggies in the bottom of a large bowl.  Toss with pasta.  Toss with feta and parsley last so that the feta keeps its shape a bit.  You can serve immediately but it tastes better if you chill it several hours and let the flavors get to know one another.

Clearly my measurements are inexact and you can take away or add whatever you want.  I intended on putting a cucumber in it but I forgot that my daughter ate the last one for dinner last night in protest over my daring to make Mexican lasagna (her most hated meal).   Anyway, here it is assembled:

Now that is one big bowl of yummy goodness!  I will likely spend the afternoon snacking on it and ignoring the Jillian video in my DVD player.