I think I have an obsession with warm pasta salads.

There is something just so perfect about them. I don’t know what it is. But every time I enter the kitchen with a mind to make up something new, all I come away with are…warm pasta salads. Maybe it’s because they are virtually brainless to make. Maybe it’s because they are so damn good. I don’t know. But they are portable (important for someone like me who eats most of her meals on the go because her schedule is so crazy), and they go well with a glass of wine and a breezy spring evening on the balcony, and they can be pretty damn healthy (whole grains + veggie rainbow + lentils + garlic + olive oil + cheese = one healthy meal you’ve got there), so they work for me. So here is a recipe for my recent favorite.

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For so long now, I’ve been eager to try leeks. I see them in these gorgeous, delicious-sounding recipes all the time, but I could never find them in the store to try myself. Last week I finally found them at Trader Joe’s, and couldn’t wait to try them. Tonight I eagerly whipped up another warm pasta salad recipe including them (inspired by my recent obsession), anticipating some kind of flavor nirvana. I took my first bite of my goat-cheese-covered veggie pasta salad, and…!

Eugh.

They’re just like big fancy chives. And don’t get me wrong, I like me some chives on my baked potatoes from time to time. But these are just gross to me. All these months of anticipation leading up to absolutely nothing. Leeks, you disappoint me.

I bet I’ll still try making a vichyssoise this summer, though, because I’m planning on experimenting with cold soups now that I have a blender that works. Also, when your apartment doesn’t have air conditioning (i.e. mine), what’s better than a cold cup of soup on a hot summer day?

Hey guys! Sorry for the lack of posts yesterday; I had a kinda rough morning at work and then some other crap happened that landed me bedridden with an aching back and throbbing head for about six hours. But I’m back, and I’m here to gush about my gorgey little balcony garden that I planted this past weekend.

After Jason hung up my hummingbird feeder for me on Saturday, I was finally inspired enough to do what I’d been meaning to do for ages: plant a container garden. So, Sunday morning I woke up bright and early and took a trip to Home Depot, where I wandered around their garden center for an hour and a half debating which flowers I wanted. I decided on petunias and geraniums, because they were affordable and would do well on my partial-shade balcony. So I packed them away in my cloth bags and took a leisurely walk home, sun shining and not a cloud in the sky (have I mentioned how much I love Shadyside in the spring?), Simon & Garfunkel playing on my headphones, breeze whipping through my hair. We made it home with just one casualty: one of my geraniums got smashed in the bag, but it seems to be doing alright now that I staked it back up.

So I put on my new gardening gloves and got to work. I first filled my big 12 gallon pot with soil and stuck my little baby hosta (more on that later) in the middle, and put a ring of pink, peach, and red geraniums around it. This was really my first foray into “real” gardening, and I was pretty satisfied with my work.

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Good morning! How were everyone’s weekends? Mine was really great: spent Friday and Saturday with Jason, and Sunday I planted my garden! I’ll be back later today with more details when I have time — stupid morning shifts messin’ with my groove.

Real quick, though, I wanted to share with you this awesome Crayola Color Chart by Steve Von Worley I found over at Black&Eiffel.

How cool is that? Without waxing poetic here, I think it could be sort of symbolic of how, over time, our whole lives have become more complicated, with more choices for everything. Then again, I think I’d get bored with the 1903 box. Remember in restaurants when we were little, they’d always give us just four crayon colors? That annoyed the heck outta me. I had a lot of orange people with blue hair on my placemat pictures.

Hi blog! Sorry for the lack of posts yesterday; I had a rather hectic day and really didn’t get time to write anything at all. Thursdays are a bad day for me time-wise…so much running around!

I’m going to cut out early for the weekend here, because I know today will be a busy day as well. So, I’ll leave you with these photos of the oh-so-pretty flowers Jason got me last weekend :) The sunlight came through my window so perfectly when I got up yesterday morning that I couldn’t resist breaking out my camera.

Bootiful bootiful. And they smell so good too!

So, any exciting plans for your weekends, dear readers? I know I’ve got myself a date with a cute boy and a meteor shower in the wee hours tonight. Anyone else going to be out stargazing?

I’ll be back Monday with more Etsy jewelry, a rant about a particular vegetable, and much more for the week to come. See you then!