I changed to pasta salad for cold buffets

Actually, I have never cared for either potato or pasta salads. Or anything else that contains mayonnaise. My mom always made potato salads because my dad liked it, but I didn't like cold potatoes, hard-boiled eggs, or the mayonnaise. Later, when my brother's wife started making it there were also pickles in it. I didn't care for cold pasta either, although sometimes I could tolerate it if it had something like Italian dressing instead of mayo. I guess I was always a little to picky when it comes to eating.

I love pasta salads. Fresh broccoli florets and cauliflower and mushrooms are good add-ins. Also frozen peas (thawed) and some purple onion rings. Green bell peppers sliced thinly and shredded carrots go well too. Sometimes I'll add thin small tomato strips but just the meat of the tomato to keep the juices out. Toss it all with a nice balsamic vinegar based dressing and it's a meal in itself.

We love our pasta salad in my home I just make it with sliced capsicums...red n green...red onions...sun dried tomatoes and a balsamic vinegar dressing with olive oil and some lemon juice. But then it all depends I may skip that dressing and just put mayonnaise! I some times add some hard boiled eggs to it...or steamed vegies like broccoli...peas. or what ever is there! to me pasta salad is a very versatile salad one can put any thing into it and it works all the time!

Pasta salad always seems to go faster than potato salad, at least at my house. I usually end up frying up leftover potato salad into home fries. For potato salad, I use the standard vegetables: onions, peppers and parsley or cilantro. I like to use different varieties of peppers and onions for interest. Sometimes I add peas or other chopped veggies, too. I also make it a little different than others do. Most salt the pasta water, then add more after the pasta, dressing and veggies are tossed together. What I do is chop the veggies and add a bit of salt to them, letting them sit at room temperature until the pasta is ready. What this does is bleed the water (and flavor) out of them, which in turn is absorbed into the pasta once they are mixed together. I find that doing this reduces the amount of salt needed, as well as using less dressing...while making a more flavorful salad. If you try this, let me know what you think. If there's leftover pasta salad, it's easy to make a meal out of it by adding chopped chicken, turkey, ham or tuna.

I love pasta salads but I have only made one and it has been maybe 3 years ago! I hardly ever make those but it does sound good!!!!

Yes I love pasta anything really. For an earlier lunch I had Rotini Primavera with some olive oil, dices onions and peppers. I also added a little of Basil Pesto and voila a quick simple easy lunch. I have made some cold macaroni pasta salad by adding most of the potato salad ingredients you mentioned with out the potato but do like to add diced ham and usually all who have eaten it love it.

Yes, I do make pasta salads a lot when it gets warm outside. I do mayonnaise pasta salads and pasta salads with dressings like italian dressing. I made a pasta salad last week that had the noodles, diced cucumber, diced celery, and tomatoes and italian dressing in it. It was really good.

i love cold pasta salad and would definitely pick that over potato salad. we only have a short summer here in canada but i gets pretty hot so we make stuff to kee us cool.

A family favourite here that doesn't get old is my pasta salad. As for veggies, I add whatever I have on hand (celery, carrots, peppers, onions), cheese, gerkin pickles and instead of a creamy base salad dressing, I reach for Catalina. The kids LOVE it. I've also used Italian salad dressing on rice with broccoli which keeps very well. Bon apetit!

Potato salad is still the best for me.

I tend to fry up diced whatever vegetables I have to hand - peppers, mushrooms, maybe green beans. Sweetcorn's good too. Sometimes tomato, but I wouldn't fry that. You could try rice salad too, for variety.