I am not a food blogger. This is why.

Last Saturday, Jonathan and I had a lovely picnic at a local park. His mom had given me an adorable picnic basket for my birthday (pictured top right), complete with forks, spoons, knives, plates, wine glasses and a bottle opener. The little zippered pouch in the middle is actually an insulated cooler, which I filled with a bottle of wine, green grapes, pretzel crisps, Hershey's chocolate and almonds for dessert, and a big Tupperware of "Patriot Salad," which I'm going to share to the recipe to below.

While painstakingly arranging the ingredients to get the best natural lighting and trying to take pictures of the pasta bowl without catching my shadow, I realized I am not a food blogger. That point was further driven home when I had to google questions like this ... and this. Embarrassing. In my defense, I was pretty sure I knew the answers, I just figured I would rather be safe than sorry. :)

First, the ingredients:

I helped my grandma make a delicious pasta salad at Fourth of July this summer. I didn't remember exactly what was in it, but every time I went grocery shopping I would pick up a few things that looked good: A can of black olives here, a package of salami there. The only thing I really needed a "recipe" for was the dressing, and I found this one online. The pasta ingredients were very similar to the ones I was using, so I thought it would be a good match. (It was! I used white wine vinegar instead of red wine because that's what I had in the cabinet, and I only used salt, pepper and minced garlic instead of all the spices listed.) Basically, what I'm trying to say is you can put almost any cold ingredients you want in this pasta, and it will taste good. It's a really good "clean out the cabinets" recipe. This is what I used:

• One 12-oz. box rotini
• One can black olives
• One can garbanzo beans
• 6 oz. salami (not quite the whole package)
• 6 oz. mozzarella (about half the package)
• One red pepper
• One green pepper

Yeah, I cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food. ;)

After preparing the ingredients (a.k.a. cooking the pasta and chopping all the other stuff), mix everything into a big bowl. And I mean a big bowl—I had to upgrade after adding the meat and cheese haha.

After adding and mixing the dressing, I put the whole thing in the fridge to chill overnight. And voila! You have a delicious patriot salad, perfect for family gatherings and picnics. :) If I hadn't been taking photographs of everything and thinking about how to make this embarrassing food blog seem humorous, this probably would have taken me less than 30 minutes, and that's with my rudimentary chopping skills. I'm sure an experienced cook would be able to make this much faster.

Conclusion: While I'll still enjoy eating food and sometimes sharing my finds with you, I probably won't be posting another cooking blog any time soon. (Thanks for sticking with me through this one!)

How do you feel about cooking posts? Or food photography? Am I just making it much harder than it should be?