getting in the spring of things

Spring showers are getting a bit of a late start here but we're getting our money's worth now; the forecast shows lots and lots of rain in the next week.  The rain is certainly good for flowers, though.  These peonies at Fresh Market are luscious but I'm happy with the multicolored bouquet of lilies that my husband got me this week.

For a Memorial Day barbecue, I made this veggie orzo pasta salad.  I was craving fresh food and this packed it in.

I used Giada's red wine vinaigrette from here (with vegetable oil in place of olive since I'd run out of the latter) and customized my salad components.  I boiled a pot of water, scalded some very thin Peruvian asparagus, then dumped a package of whole wheat orzo in the asparagus water.  I chopped the asparagus into 1-inch pieces, about half of an orange and half of a yellow bell pepper, about a third of a red onion, half a pint of grape tomatoes, and a zucchini.  Once the pasta was cooked, drained, and cooled a bit, I mixed everything together, sprinkled in most of a small container of crumbled feta cheese, and drizzled enough of the vinaigrette to coat and flavor everything.  I had a little bit of orzo and vinaigrette leftover, which I used the next day with the rest of the uncut veggies.  This is best served room temperature or only slightly chilled so you can actually taste everything.  Yum.

P.S. I'm pretty sure I spotted these white mixing bowls (blue lids not pictured) on the latest "Keeping up with the Kardashians" in Bruce's man-house.  Also a bottle of, I'm pretty sure, Pace Picante salsa.  This tells me that even rich guys would live like college kids without their spouses to surround them with high-end accoutrements.  I once saw the family use a set of black and white plastic Missoni for Target tumblers but that was more about employing the high-low trend.  Pace is pretty much low-low.