For someone who eats everything, I'm still choosy when it comes to potato and macaroni salads. On this day of traditional summer picnicking, I concocted my own Warm Potato Salad:

Peel and dice raw Yukon Gold potatoes; set in glass casserole dish with glass lid and microwave on high for six minutes. Let sit in covered dish for an additional five minutes. Mix in mayonnaise, diced bread-and-butter pickles, a little pickle juice, and diced hard-cooked egg. All volumes to your taste.

That's it. No unwanted pimento or celery or black pepper or poppy seeds or what have you. I was happy.

Tonight's dinner:

-purchase cheeseburger with everything (cheese, ketchup, mustard, pickles, onions, tomatoes, lettuce, "special sauce") from local awesome burger spot, carry home

-chop entire burger into bite-size pieces

-peel and dice half a cucumber, halve grape tomatoes

-throw burger, cucumber, and tomatoes into bowl

-mix, eat with fork like a salad.

Hey, where are you guys all going? It was delicious, I swear!

Adventures in lazy cooking:

When one decides, "To heck with it, no one will eating this pork with peapods dish that I am making but me, so I'm not going to bother taking the strings off the peapods tonight"-- fine, go lazy if you must, but, dear god, CHEW THOROUGHLY. Quite disturbing to swallow and find one-half a peapod in your mouth and the other half in your gullet STILL CONNECTED BY THE STRING. Elghgg.

I had to work part of the holiday, so I just counted the time I did have off as a good thing, and took it easy rather than make plans with others. I did make time to make a yummy dinner for myself from scratch:

Chicken with sun-dried tomatoes in dijon-riesling-cream sauce
Sesame noodles
Spicy peanut butter soup
Tart green salad with proscuitto and asiago and warm balsamic dressing
Warm butterscotch-maple pudding

I love mixing cuisines.

So I did a taste-test on a few different energy bars based on your suggestions.

Luna Bar, Lemon Zest flavor: Nice! It's not cake-like as I prefer, but it was tasty. It's like a dense-and-hearty rice krispie treat, without the sticky-sweet insubstantiality, and if it weren't for the icing it would be dull, but it is lovely sweet icing, a bit candy-like in just the right dose. Not too high in fat or calories, so I felt like I could eat it and then eat dinner an hour later if that's how things fell out. I'll try a couple of other flavors.

Power Bar Pria, Chocolate Peanut Crunch: I have not yet dropped dead from peanut-carried salmonella, so I can endorse this one. (Actually their website specifically says they're not affected by the recall. Yay!) Good tasting! A small bar, low in fat and calories so good for a fast guilt-free bite, and the chocolate coating was very nice. Texture close to rice krispies but denser, like the Luna Bar. I'd buy this one again and will try other flavors.

Clif Kid Organic Z Bar, Chocolate Brownie flavor: I detested the Clif bar I'd tried last week--tasted like a rock--but gave this a try because I thought since it was for kids they might have candied it up a bit, you know. Apparently they were using the Dickensian Orphanage Philosophy Of Treating Kids, because I couldn't get beyond one bite. Another chocolate-flavored rock. Ugh.

Larabar, Chocolate Coconut Chew: Now, THIS tasted like dessert. Mmm. Chewy/cakey but hearty, and yummy enough to make me wish I had another bite or two to the bar. Naturally, it's the highest in fat 'n' calories of the four, on a par with a candy bar. I'd choose it over a candy bar if I wanted something to stave off hunger, but I wouldn't choose it over a cookie or brownie for dessert. All the flavors seem to run high in fat grams, but rely on natural ingredients for sweetness and heartiness, so, I'll probably be buying these too.