Bucking a trend, with excellent pasta salad

I've come to the sad realization that pasta salad is a food trend on the decline. Do you suppose future generations will think back on this once popular summertime fare the way we today think sneeringly of green-bean casserole covered in mushroom soup and canned french-fried onions? Or Jell-o laced with fruit cocktail? Seems hard to imagine, but I'm thinking... yeah.

For about 15 years, starting around 1984, I'd take a pasta salad to any potluck occasion. But I realized yesterday I hadn't made a pasta salad all summer. And I haven't eaten any anywhere else either. Now, instead of adding summer vegetables to pasta to create salad variations, we're just adding vegetables to vegetables. We mix corn with beans and cucumber and red pepper to make a salad. We mix eggplant with olives and capers and zucchini to make a salad. We throw basil and tomato and mozzarella together to make this season's trendiest potluck offering, a Caprese salad. We're simply dispensing with the empty carbs and time it takes to boil up noodles to distract from all this vegetable goodness.

I gotta say, I feel bad about this. I've been a big fan of pasta salad through the years. So, since we had a potluck to go to yesterday, I decided to buck this newly identified trend, and I made the best pasta salad I think I've ever produced. I started with a recipe for an eggplant salad, cut back some on the eggplant, and added cooked mostaccioli. It was wonderful.

Not surprisingly, no one else brought a pasta salad to last night's party. And as good as my creation was, most of it went uneaten. We're having the leftovers tonight for dinner. Could this be evidence that America has really lost its appetite for this favorite side dish from the 1980s? Say it ain't so...

Pasta salad with grilled eggplant, tomatoes and feta

Half of a 1-pound eggplant, cut crosswise into 1/2-inch rounds (about 6 slices)
Four medium-sized tomatoes, diced (I used two orange tomatoes and two red)
1/4 cup crumbled feta cheese
2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2 teaspoons capers
One medium-sized sweet onion, diced fine
12 pitted Kalamata olives, chopped
1/4 cup extravirgin olive oil
1 clove minced garlic
1 pound mostaciolli or ziti

Cook pasta according to package directions. Drain in a collander and rinse. Brush eggplant slices with olive oil. Grill on medium-high heat for five minutes per side. Cool slightly, cut each slice into four quarters. In a large bowl, combine remaining olive with basil, olives, onion, vinegars, capers, garlic, tomatoes. Add eggplant and pasta. Mix well. Sprinkle with feta cheese. Refrigerate at least an hour before serving.