Cooking up Salad Nicoise

We seem to get in a cooking rut at times, especially here in the four months of 105+ temperatures.  It's just too hot to use the oven, so the grill is big and so are salads.  Well, I was in a salad rut so I tried something new this week.  I went to my favorite cookbook author, Ina Garten, the Barefoot Contessa.  It seems her recipes are easy to follow and use good fresh foods.  I didn't know if my husband would like this but he does love Ahi Tuna, so I went for it.

Here's the recipe -- I was a little worried because there was a recipe within the recipe for the French Potato Salad.  But I made it through all the pages and it was wonderful.  My husband gave his approval and said it was good to have again.

Another Big Apple Treasure and their paper

The other place my darling daughter went (for me) in the Big Apple was the Magnolia Bakery.  It's a dream of mine to walk through their doors.  I have all their cookbooks == this was their first.

I have made so many fabulous recipes from this cookbook.  I almost always make birthday cakes for our family.  We really don't like most bakery cakes and it's always fun to pick a new kind of cake (except for the year angel food cake was chosen and it wasn't quite the decadent choice we preferred).  I made this recipe this weekend for the Super Bowl party and Bible study.

It was very labor intensive and there are 3 1/2 sticks of butter in the recipe, it took 4 bowls, 3 different layers and 2 steps in the oven.  But they were heavenly.

These are the goodies that came from the bakery:

The red velvet cupcake didn't last for the picture!  There's a pistachio, devil's food and their famous white cake too.  She even brought me a bag that will never be used, of course!  I can't wait to go this summer.