Well, I am headed off soon to visit LA for a work retreat! I’m so excited about it – among other things (most of the itinerary is a surprise) I do know that we are going to In-N-Out. And also… brace yourselves…

I’ve never been.

I’m not sure if I can really call myself a citizen of the West Coast yet for that reason, but that will all be solved soon. I do need some advice on what to order, though. Aren’t there about 70 bajillion possibilities and most of them are off menu? What do you guys get there?

I’m also really excited about it just being warm. It is the weirdest winter I have been in Portland for so far, in that it is behaving like winter everywhere else in the country instead of being very rainy and not that cold. It’s been consistently below freezing, and we have had snow twice in the past week! And it actually stuck to the ground for half a day (this is unusual here). In LA tomorrow I think the high is 71. It was at the front of my brain as I walked home from the train in my wool coat, hat, scarf and gloves.

Right now Dave and I are doing that weird pre-holiday thing where we need to make a lot of recipes for future blog posts on days when I won’t be in my own house to shoot, and yet we don’t want to buy a bunch of groceries for the same reason. So once again we’re playing my favorite game: what can we make with what we already have?

It has come to my attention that I will eat just about anything that has the combination of bacon and blue cheese in or on it. I also realized at our party last weekend that there is no ceiling to my consumption of bacon-wrapped dates. Therefore, since we had bacon, blue cheese and dates in the house this week, it seemed that it was preordained that they should all come together in a chicken salad.

Here’s what you need:

1 cooked chicken breast, chopped into cubes or shredded
6-8 chopped dates
3 slices of cooked bacon
2-3 Tbsp. blue cheese crumbles
2 ribs celery, diced
2-4 Tbsp. mayo, depending on your texture preference
Pinch of salt

This is an easy one! Once you have chopped everything, stir it together in a bowl and spread it onto bread.