Dinner OK, Success, and Fail

In an attempt to branch out and try different markets in the area, Jen and I went to the 14th and U St farmers market last weekend. Getting there was a bit of adventure considering half the Mall was shut down and covered in pink. Stupid breast cancer messing with me before I've had coffee. That's just MEAN.

After picking up some coffee we went and took a look at each of the vendors before buying anything. The first purchase for both of us was strawberries. Why do we keep picking up the delicate things first? My goal for the summer is to remember to not be an idiot at least once. Maybe coffee before instead of at the market would be helpful. My second purchase was flowers. See, clearly I need more coffee. They did smell nice and kept most of the week. Hello peonies!
I picked up a jar of Roasted Shallot and Barolo sauce, along with some pasta from the same vendor. I had read good things about him from a couple of local bloggers, and was excited to try it out. I also picked up some hamburger buns from another vendor because I had read that they were excellent. I got both the regular buns and the Parmesan ones.

Saturday night we had friends over for dinner and I made the first bread salad of the season. Hi Bread Salad. I missed you. We used the hamburger buns for burgers from the butcher. I liked mine better. Maybe that will be this weekend's project...
I also made strawberry shortcake. There were a couple left over so we had them again the next night. I did hold off on eating it for breakfast.
We made the BBQ chicken sandwiches with the Parmesan rolls. Dude, caramelized shallots mixed with Jack Daniels BBQ sauce, chicken, and cheddar on the Parm rolls is awesome.
Wednesday night we tried the Barolo sauce and the pasta. Wow. It was bad. Really bad. Neither Matt nor I could eat it. We ended up eating crackers and cheese for dinner.