Good times and noodle salad

Mmmm, oh I can't believe it, I just made a pasta salad that tastes like my favorite tomato
mozarella bagel by Thomas! I am thrilled. Today has been quite a day of cooking: for lunch I took the celery I had in the fridge from making a different salad on the weekend (which received massive boos from one member of my household because "the celery is too hard and the leaves get stuck on the roof of your mouth") and whipped up a delicious soup. Call me crazy for cooking soup in this weather, but my kitchen remains amazingly cool even now because it's north facing and shaded by several trees. This soup reminded me of the Chinese Beef Casserole my mom used to make (or maybe still makes, I don't know), which is also heavy on celery, just minus the beef!
Just now I made some italian style pasta salad and can't wait to chow down, because, as I mentioned, it tastes like my absolute favorite food ever made by the bagel man. The tomato mozarella bagel was my main form of sustenance during my first month in Dresden, when I was staying next to Bagel's at the Mondpalast hostel. Even now I live only about a ten minute walk from there, and am so pleased that he is open again during the day, because now if there's crappy weather and we need to get out, I can have a coffee there and W can drink a "mango": he prefers to shorten mango juice to just mango.

Here are the recipes, sorry North Americans for the metric units of measure, but there are lots of good conversion sites online and I am lazy:

Celery Soup

6 oz. finely chopped celery (sticks and leaves, not the root! You can make a good schnitzel out of the root)
1 small onion, finely chopped
6 oz. potato
1/2 oz. unsalted butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 1/2 pints vegetable broth
salt
2 tablespoons heavy cream
chopped parsley

Melt the butter in a large pan together with the olive oil and gently fry the onion and celery until soft, about 10 minutes.

Add the vegetable broth and diced potato.

Boil for about 20 minutes, then blend it with your mixer stick (or immersion blender or Purierstab, whatever you want to call it) leaving some chunks. Salt it, throw in the cream, stir it, chop a little parsley and sprinkle it on top to make it pretty.

I doubled this due to my overabundance of celery, so we will be eating celery soup tomorrow too.

Italian Pasta Salad

250 grams noodles (I used fusilli)
200 grams mozzarella (the fresh kind in ball form)
100 grams dried tomatoes
arugula
1 clove of garlic
70 mL olive oil
balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon each pesto, mustard, honey
parmesan
salt and pepper

Cook the noodles and rinse them with cold water.
Wash the arugula and chop it a bit.
Drain the oil from the dried tomatoes and the water from the mozzarella, chop those into about 1 cm cubes.
Mix all this in a large salad bowl, add salt and pepper to taste.
Mix oil, vinegar, garlic (chopped or pressed), pesto, mustard and honey and pour over salad shortly before eating.
Mix salad and garnish with parmesan.
Mmmmm!

For this salad you can also add some ham and pine nuts, I left off the ham since I don't eat the stuff, and forgot the roasted pine nuts after having gone on an expedition to find some! Another note: the arugula in this salad also got massive boos from that special member of my household who also stated that it was "too hard" and picked out every last bit.