For our wedding anniversary last night, my husband and I wanted to go somewhere nice. So we wandered down to 202 Market, which is just about the most beautiful bar in Roanoke.

Since we’re trying to save a little dough for our big trip to Busch Gardens next weekend (woo hoo! Big Bad Wolf!), we weren’t in the mood to drop $100 or more for dinner. We decided instead to either order bar food and appetizers or split an entree at the bar.

Lots of people seem to have an aversion to eating at the bar, or an aversion to splitting an entree in a fancy restaurant, as if that would be tacky. But my friend Megan taught me that it feels more casual and acceptable to do that at the bar. She and her husband do it all the time, and they get to try out all kinds of meals in nice restaurants without dropping a wad or blowing the buttons off their pants.

At 202, Howard ordered a beer and I had a half-price lemongrass martini (it was Ladies’ Night), which consisted of lemongrass-infused vodka, vanilla simple syrup and fresh lime juice. Refreshing and delightful. We started with the $5 mushroom tempura snackie, which has to be one of the best appetizer deals in all of Roanoke — you get a whole bowl full of crispy, meaty wild mushrooms in a savory sauce.

File photo by Sam Dean/The Roanoke Times

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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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A little while back, I wrote about a weekend feast of pork ribs and red-skinned potato salad.

One blog reader requested the recipe for my family’s all-time favorite potato salad, and I am now prepared to offer exact measurements for all the ingredients.

My sister came through with the measurements this morning, which is appropriate because she’s the one who started this whole potato salad thing, in a roundabout way.

When she was in college, Sis dated a chef who ended up being a real jerk. But we did get this recipe out of him before they broke up, so you see something positive comes out of every relationship. Gee, I hope that guy isn’t reading my blog.

The secret to this potato salad, I believe, is the bacon. We all know that bacon makes just about everything taste better.

I’ll attach the recipe below. As with any potato salad, this one tastes a lot better after it has had a chance to sit for a few hours or overnight.

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Our tantalizing food photo of the week was submitted by blog reader Sean, who wrote:

“This is how I like to eat my Lox. In this version of the Lox I have a toasted bagel, cream cheese, capers and smoked salmon, of course. Then I add a little red onion, Tabasco, boiled egg and garnished with dill. Before I put everything together I sprinkle lemon on the salmon.”

Yummelicious. To see the Fridge Magnet’s fine collection of food photos, hit the Flickr site.
Please contribute your own photos! If you’d rather not join Flickr (it’s free), feel free to send them to me at lindsey.nair@roanoke.com.

Have a tasty weekend!