salad days.

What I really don't like is making something that I either screwed up or tastes bad because of weird ingredient combinations. Especially when I am counting on it as being a meal for 5 days a week or something. I always try recipes that have appealing ingredients to me and that I know that I won't mess up. The most recent mess-up that I can think of was I made a potato soup and ended up with like potato porridge, which sounds kind of interesting, but made me want to barf each time I swallowed. Or the time I tried to make ricotta gnocchi (first time ever making gnocchi) and ended up with these gobs of dough that disintegrated into a goopy weird paste in your mouth that just wouldn't...dissolve.

So I was reading Molly Wizenberg's (Orangette) A Homemade Life (it's good! you should read it as well) and she had a recipe for potato salad (I! Love! Potato! Salad!) but seriously some sketchy weird ingredients were in this salad. And she admitted it as well that it's a bit of a weird combo, but that she was absolutely in love. I mean, mayonnaise (I don't really like mayonnaise based potato salads in the first place, I'm more into sour cream or vinegar) and ranch dressing (that stuff only belongs on chicken wings and pizza) and dill and eggs? Really weird combo. But I trust this girl (I've tried several of her recipes before and they made me pretty happy) so I said okay, fuck it, let's try this weird potato salad.
And it's good! And it's pretty (with the flecks of green from chopped up dill and green onions and the red skinned potatoes and yellow-y orange egg yolks) and you should try it too (go find Molly's book or just ask me in real life and we'll talk).