A Girl & Her Stove: Caesar Potato Salad with Snap Peas

I'll admit, some days it's just too hot and too tiring to bake. Today's temperature was in the 80s, a severe thunderstorm whipped through St. Louis and felled a gigantic sweet gum tree limb, which promptly landed on top of my little red truck. All is well, but baking coconut cupcakes is going to wait until tomorrow. I'll post a bonus blog entry tomorrow (Wed., 6/3) after I bake those little, yummy post-modern white-on-white creations, so don't worry. The girl and her oven will make an appearance this week, especially since I promised my good buddy Shane that he would be the lucky recipient of these bad boys.


Yet, Dave and I knew that dinner must go on, regardless of my baking rut and fallen tree limb issues. So, I consulted Epicurious.com (oh, how I love thee) to find a recipe that would use our russet potatoes and sugar snap peas. While Dave grilled chicken thighs in a sesame oil, maple, cilantro, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, honey glaze, I whipped up a recipe from Bon Appetit's June 2009 issue: Caesar Potato Salad with Snap Peas. I contend that this recipe would be made even better with bits of bacon and perhaps a dollop of honey and cilantro, which I picked fresh from my garden tonight. The storm spared my herbs, thank goodness.

So, after a long, rainy afternoon, Dave and I enjoyed a blissful dinner replete with a crisp, apple-flavored Eve Chardonnay. And as I sipped my wine, forked my potato salad and conversed with my honey, I thought of a quote I read (The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner--thanks, Jenna!) today at lunch on my front stoop: "Maybe happiness is this: not feeling like you should be elsewhere, doing something else, being someone else."

I agree. Happiness, for me, is often found in the everyday going ons of my life and often catches me completely unaware.


Listening to: "It's Coming Down," Cake