The Silver Lining

Last weekend, I had to gleefully attended my sister in law's bridal shower. It was supposed to be a "floating" shower I know, I didn't know what the hell it meant either. According to my understanding of this type of shower, one was free to drop in, or "float" in I guess, at one's discretion, drop off the gift and float on out. I dragged went with The Dude's aunt (Fifi). We floated on in, about a half an hour after the shower was to begin. Mmm-kay. UNCOMFORTABLE. We walk in and realize we're horribly under dressed. We thought "church clothes" would suffice...apparently not. See, The Dude's sister and all of her friends have these delusions that they are akin to Carrie Bradshaw and the other gals from "Sex in the City." They dress in fancy, fashionable clothing, sport pearls, and ridiculously high heels. All of these girls are young and newly out of college. Their tiny apartments are decorated like they're the queens of Sheba. Some are still living on Mommy and Daddy's dollar. In fact, the shower was held at the Maid of Honor's Mom's house. Where was I going with this? Oh yes.

The only redeeming part of this event was the unbelievable strong Mimosas. Well, that and the super-fab pasta dish that was served. I poked around the food table and was truly unimpressed, until I spotted IT. I knew each of the bridesmaids had each brought a dish. A quick scan of the girls and I KNEW which one had brought the only good tasting dish. Amongst the waifish dolls stood one slightly plump girl. BINGO! I sweetly asked who had made the pasta dish and she shyly raised her hand. Ha! I knew it! 'Atta girl! Mmmmm, chicken pesto pasta dish, you were divine. I had two platefuls, washed down with, the tiniest, slice of fresh fruit Doberge cake (never let the skinny girl cut the cake slices...geez).

I knew I'd have to replicate it, and the flavors weren't that hard to figure out. Just to be sure, I asked the girl what was in it, and floated on outta there. It should be noted that no one else was doing any floating on out. Everyone just sat there, doing nothing...very odd.

Here it is folks:

The ingredients (not pictured is the pepper, which is simply to taste).

1lb Penne pasta, cooked and drained

1 Cup mayonnaise

1 Cup(ish) basil pesto *I was lucky enough to get that big jar of pesto from my friend! Thanks! P.S. I have your helping of the pasta dish in my fridge, so stop on by)

1Cup dried cranberries

1 Cup pecans (goody for you if you noticed I have walnuts in the pic. I was out of pecans)

3/4 minced celery

cooked chicken breast, chopped or shredded. Add as much or as little as you want.
In a good sized bowl, mix the mayo and pesto.

Add the cranberries, celery, nuts and chicken. Toss with pasta. Chill until serving.

A couple of tidbits of info. regarding this here post:

A.) I had to dig through this mess, sometimes called my purse,

to locate the thumb drive containing my memory card for the camera in order to shoot these pics. There was a lot of cursing involved.

2.) While I had no pecans with which to make this dish, I did have an unusually high stash of walnuts.

Go ahead, count 'em. Four, FOUR bags of walnuts! Why, I ask you, why?! I'm no big walnut fan, in fact, I don't even recognize the walnut bag on the far left. I have never seen that bag before. Weird. I must have little gnomes that stock my cupboards with walnuts in the night. Hey, at least it's better than the ones that refill mayonnaise jars (eeewww! Yeah, I TOTALLY just went there!).