I love Fourth of July weekend, but if I don’t see another hot dog or hamburger for a month, I’ll be a happy camper. Ditto that on pasta salad, potato salad and deviled eggs.

Well, I guess I could always force down a couple of deviled eggs.

If you’re like me and are ready to move on to more exotic flavors, perhaps this news is for you: Doreen Sidor, a personal chef who formerly taught cooking classes at Twist & Turns in downtown Roanoke, has opened up her own restaurant at 4210 Brambleton Avenue called Doreen’s Gourmet (in the former High Point Coffee building).

Not only does Doreen plan to sell gourmet meals to go, sandwiches, salads, coffee and tea, smoothies and more, she also wants to continue having cooking classes from time to time in her new kitchen. Keep an eye on our Foodie Calendar in each Thursday’s Inside Out for details about those classes.

Doreen is having an Grand Opening celebration at her new restaurant tomorrow and Wednesday night from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. The event will feature free wine tastings from Valhalla Vineyards, free gourmet food samples and live music!

I’m betting there will be no hot dogs on the menu…

It is the height of cookout season. You’re expected to bring a side dish.

At almost the last minute, in an effort to avoid another trip to the grocery store, you pull out the elbow macaroni and mayonnaise with plans to concoct one of summer’s least inspiring dishes: macaroni salad.

Now, I’m sure there are folks out there who adore macaroni salad, and I’m not saying it can’t be good if it’s prepared well. Usually “well” involves fresh tomatoes and grated cheddar, in my opinion. But overall, I agree with Sara Dickerman, who wrote a recent article for Slate.com about pasta salad, when she says “Pasta salad is the wallflower of summer foods: It almost always makes it to the barbecue, but no one quite remembers who invited it.”

The rest of her article is equally amusing and enlightening. Ultimately, she says the key to a good cold noodle dish is “attentive seasoning, both with salt and with more aromatic ingredients like fresh herbs and scallions.”

I would urge you to read the entire article here. You’ll surely enjoy it as much as I did. But in the interest of time, I will boil down her twelve tips here:

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Blog reader Deb was the quickest with her keyboard this time around, so she wins the three books I discussed in this morning’s blog entry.
Since Deb is such a faithful reader of the blog, I could have sworn that she’d won something before. But when I checked back, she had not. So congratulations to Deb! You’ll have to let us know how those pretzel recipes turn out.
For the rest of you, I have a wonderful recipe sent in earlier this week by blog reader Amanda. This recipe has a twist on an old favorite, pasta salad. Called Supreme Pizza Pasta Salad, it is loaded with tomatoes, onion, mushrooms, bell pepper, pepperoni, mozzerella cheese and more.
Check it out, and have a great weekend! The blog will be alive with guest bloggers all next week, so be sure to keep checking in.

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