Recipe: Creamy Pesto Pasta Salad

The mission: Pesto pasta salad for picnic.

The ingredients: At first I toyed with putting in pesto and mozzarella and tomatoes because I knew it would be good. But then I saw a recipe from Sweet Savory Life with creamy pesto and artichokes and peas. I don't really like peas, but the appeal of creaminess and artichokes would cover them up enough, I figured. And they did. I just tweaked my recipe to use yogurt, because in my book yogurt>mayo and Greek yogurt>plain yogurt. The end. 

The result: A flavor-packed cold pasta that got me on a kick of mixing vinaigrette-type dressings with yogurt to toss in my salads.

Creamy Pesto Pasta Salad

1/2 recipe pesto

5.3 oz. Greek yogurt (1 package)

1 package penne pasta

1 1/2 cups peas, cooked

1 can artichokes, chopped

Cook pasta. Stir prepared pesto with Greek yogurt. Mix pasta, pesto-yogurt mixture, peas and artichokes.  Serve cold.