French Potato Salad and My Favorite Stuffing

Finally, I have recipes to post! Last week was extremely busy for me with out of town guests and my mom visiting. My husband came home from a mini-deployment last night and we had a great dinner party. I wanted to make dishes that could be prepared ahead of time and I think I was 80% successful. Dinner still required a lot of work.

One of the side dishes I made is my favorite potato salad. This is perfect for picnics, summer meals or even parties. There seems to be a typo in this recipe. In the dressing they use 3 T. of white wine but I believe they mean white wine vinegar (I use the latter and it really adds flavor). Also, sometimes I add more white wine than the recipe calls for when boiling the potatoes.

Another side dish for last night's meal was my all-time favorite stuffing that I couldn't possibly reserve for only Thanksgiving so I usually serve it whenever I make my garlic chicken dish.

Wild Rice, Apple, and Dried-Cranberry Stuffing

Notes:

1.) To make this dish easier buy Trader Joe's already cooked wild rice. You put it in boiling water for 5 minutes and it's done! This package of wild rice will be enough for this recipe and leave you with an extra cup of rice (which is great when mixed with basmati rice and toasted almonds).

2.) You don't need to use homemade chicken stock in this stuffing (unless you happen to already have some in your fridge). Store bought chicken stock works just fine.

3.) When shopping for the ingredients you'll need about 2 apples, 5 stalks of celery, a loaf of french bread (the 99cents loaf at your local grocery store works great) and 2 small onions.

4.) As mentioned in the recipe, you can make this entire dish a day ahead (which I did). Just make sure you don't drizzle the melted butter and chicken stock on the stuffing until right before you put it in the oven.

More recipes to come from last night's dinner party....