First, some excellent news.  There's a new Web site called Food Gawker that's been set up to replace the recently-demised TasteSpotting.  Check it out!  (Thanks for the heads-up, Shaw Girl.)

Now, back to our regular programming.  Saturday night I had a guest for dinner and prepared four simple, summery courses using almost all local ingredients.  I'll blog about them all in the coming days.  First up was Julia Child's Vichyssoise recipe—a cold potato and leek soup—from Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  It's undoubtedly one of the simplest recipes in the book . . . 5 ingredients . . . potatoes, leeks, chicken stock, salt and heavy cream . . . but I nevertheless managed to screw it up.  Ms. Childs advises: "Season to taste, oversalting very slightly as salt loses savor in a cold dish."  Well, I oversalted it, but not slightly.  I just plain oversalted it.  I tried to dial back the salt a bit with some acid . . . lemon juice . . . but the vichyssoise was too far gone.  It was still edible, but definitely oversalted.  Oh well.  I probably won't make that mistake again.  At least it looks good, topped with struggling chives from my windowsill and some shredded carrots.  Hope all y'all enjoyed the weekend.  I'll be back with the second course tomorrow.