I’m a little out of order this first week of blog-hood.  Normally, I’ll post a “what lunch looks like this week” post early in the week with a recipe following a day or so later, and then a salad recipe, and then some other stuff later in the week (this will sometimes include a cocktail, because by Friday, I’m usually in need).  However, I decided yesterday I just needed to dive in and start posting.

So today, here are some photos of one of my favorite lunch combos on a dreary, rainy, Pacific Northwest kind of day: soup and salad.

But first, here’s proof it’s dreary:

And here’s the remedy:

The soup refused to be particularly photogenic.  I promise, however, it is the best potato and leek soup on the planet.  Best yet, it’s not fussy, takes almost no time to make and is so creamy.   You can find the recipe at this link at  Erren’s Kitchen.  The salad is one of those where I had spent too much time making mac and cheese and pesto and trying my hand at macaron madness (that’s a whole other blog post – coming soon), that by the time I was getting myself ready for the week on  Sunday, I grabbed spinach greens, mixed olives in an herbed brine, and roasted, lightly pickled red peppers from this summer’s canning and topped it with feta cheese and a little bit of the olive brine and called it  salad.

Whatever this afternoon decides to throw at me, at least I had a soup and salad.