Cobb Pasta Salad with Red Wine Vinaigrette

Is there such a thing as wedding brain? You know like baby brain, where pregnant women get to say silly things and can unapologetically forget information? I know that baby brain is actually a thing, you know, since you’re body is changing and yada yada. But I really think that wedding brain should be a thing too. I’m just not with it lately. All I think about is wedding stuff and it completely fogs my usually clear mind. I actually believe it’s making me lose brain cells.

Case in point. I was absolutely certain that our wedding day was exactly eight weeks away from this past Saturday, but was brought to the harsh reality by my father that it was actually seven weeks away. I emphatically told him he was dead wrong, proceeded to take my phone out and count the weeks on the calendar to prove it. See one…two…three…four…five…six…seven…seven…Oh crap.

Yep, definitely seven weeks away. This wouldn’t be that big of a deal, but the planner in me has pretty much everything in this wedding planned down to the minute. I was going to send the invitations out 8 ½ weeks before the wedding so that people would receive them seven weeks before – giving them plenty of time to accept or decline the offer. So instead of calmly stuffing envelopes and diligently checking every name off my spreadsheet, I spent the better part of this week like a mad woman, rushing back and forth from the calligrapher, to my parents, to home, to work, back to the calligrapher and so on.

I have literally had about 2.5 seconds to cook this week so I was more than happy when Kevin offered to do some grilling instead of me cooking a whole entire meal which at this point just sounds horribly time consuming. His job, the meat; my job, the side. Even though pasta salad shouldn’t really be in my vocabulary or diet right now that’s all I could think about to accompany our grilled chicken…A little bit can’t hurt, right?? Everything in moderation… Or at least that’s what I keep telling myself.

My Mom had made a cobb salad a couple days before which triggered the idea to morph the classic into a pasta version perfect for summer barbecues and picnics – and perfect for my inconvenient craving. I threw some hardboiled eggs, lots of creamy avocado, juicy cherry tomatoes, sweet corn, chives, crispy bacon and blue cheese into a big bowl of corkscrew pasta then tossed everything with a super light red wine vinaigrette. Light, refreshing and full of flavor.