the weekend edition

this morning at 7:30 a.m. i was greeted by a 5-year-old in ladybug pajamas, wings, and a tiara:

(please ignore the Bad Dog in the foreground. actually, she's been better lately, but she's still on my D list.) we all got up and made blueberry pancakes and bacon (or at least i did while they danced around the house to van morrison's "astral weeks"). J likes his pancakes with syrup and peanut butter. i'm a purist - butter and syrup only, please. Princess likes them full-on loaded the way that my stepdad taught her - butter, peanut butter, syrup, and bananas.

after such a ridiculous breakfast, i made a light dinner tonight. i'm SO into spring food right now it's ridiculous. here i made a salad with lettuce, walnuts, feta cheese, strawberries, and purple onion, served in my great-grandmother's milk glass bowl:

freaking YUM. strawberries always remind me of my aunt patti. i used to go visit my cousins amber and jessie every summer as a kid (they were older and i totally idolized them). aunt patti ALWAYS had this amazing strawberry shampoo that we NEVER had at home, and her long, long blonde hair always smelled of it. it was like the most decadent shampoo ever created - i wanted to SWIM in it. she also cans the most amazing strawberry jam. not to mention that all these impressions were made on me during the height of my strawberry shortcake obsession, and as a result, i can never eat a strawberry without thinking of aunt patti.

i digress. tonight i also threw together this pasta salad. i'll post the recipe below - it was great.

i served the salads with some sandwiches. in our house, this means setting out a big hunk of unsliced peppered turkey breast on a cutting board, two or three kinds of bread/rolls (today we had sesame seed hoagie buns and onion rolls, plus good old home pride wheat for Princess), and a couple of kinds of sliced cheese, plus sliced tomato, sliced onion, and lettuce. also set out are pickles, pickled okra, pickled tomatoes, whatever, and all of the sandwich accoutrement that i have in the fridge (dijon & yellow mustards and miracle whip, usually). then everyone figures it out on their own.

after dinner J worked some more with Princess, who is learning how to ride her bike without the training wheels. scary stuff.

do you SEE all that padding? granted, she's going to bed tonight completely and utterly unscathed which i'm happy about, but i have yet to see a bruise, scrape, or scab on that child that even approaches the monstrosities that covered my legs when i was a child. the 80s were dangerous, man. not a knee pad or a helmet to be had, and we had to learn how to ride our bikes going uphill both ways and wearing NEON. tsk tsk. hard times.

Margaret's Saturday Pasta Salad

• 1 small jar or can artichoke hearts, drained and rinsed (the artichoke hearts, that is, not the jar or can)
• 1/2 small can chopped black olives (i used the other 1/2 of the olives to spread on my sandwich with some dijon mustard and a little miracle whip for a sort of olive spread - yum)
• 1 small jar alessi pesto sauce (i was going to make my own, but discovered that the local grocery store carries pine nuts but NOT fresh basil. what??)
• 1 package cherry tomatoes, halved or quartered (whatever you feel like, man)
• 1/2 package bow tie pasta, boiled in well-salted water
• 2-3 tablespoons minced garlic (optional)
• squeeze of fresh lemon juice (optional)
• 1 small package feta cheese
• a brick of parmesan for garnish (do not even bother with the stuff in the green can. that's fine for pizza, but keep it far away from my pasta salad recipe, kthnxbai.)

combine all in a bowl except the parmesan. real parmesan cheese is my FAVORITE cheese, but you don't need to know that for this recipe so if you're writing this down, skip this part. chill 1 hour to overnight. if you're going to use the whole bag of pasta, then double everything else, because no one likes bland pasta salad. you have to use plenty of garlicky pesto to give it kick.

when ready to serve, pull out your potato peeler and run it over the edge of your brick of parmesan to make some nice cheesy curls on top, and also maybe a little cracked black pepper.