I made a yummy summer salad today. It's Ina Garten's recipe. I did two things differently: one, I halved the recipe because no matter how yummy it is, Alan and I cannot eat four pints of cherry tomatoes before they go bad. Second, Ina cautions both on the show and in writing that one should be very, very careful not to crumble the feta. Not only did I not worry about that, I actually used some pre-crumbled feta. I used one 8-ounce block of feta, cut into cubes, and a 4-ounce package of feta crumbles.

Her non-crumbled salad did look prettier than mine, but when I'm making something like this (or a soup or pasta dish), I like the ingredients to be in very small pieces so that you're not getting one bite that's nothing but a huge hunk of onion, the next bite is only cheese, etc. I thought it would be better if the feta did crumble, so you could have all the lovely tomato, cheese, onion and herbs as one bite.

We had a few sample bites once I got it made, and it was very, very good. I think it will be even better in a couple of hours, after the vegetables have hung out in the dressing and the flavors combine a bit.

It occurs to me that as many times as I get into weird scrapes and pitfalls in the course of everyday life, I am remarkably accident-free in the kitchen. You'd think I'd always be lopping off bits of my fingers and exploding souffles and enduring unspeakable fennel incidents, but my culinary ventures are generally calm and successful. Well, except for my penchant for cremating burner covers. By the way, I got new burner covers that match the wallpaper better, and I haven't incinerated these. Yet.