Seasonal Sundays (Week 11) Mid March

Happy Sunday, all. It feels like spring around herd so my recipe suggestions lean that way, especially spring-friendly vegetable casseroles, good candidates for March and for anyone who's thinking ahead to 2021's early Easter too. Before that? Pi Day! Do you "have" to make pie? Of course not. But really, why not?

~ Skip Straight to the Good Stuff ~

Welcome to Seasonal Sundays ...

Isn't the light just so pretty this time of year? And 2021 is a good year for spring to (apparently? really truly?) arrive early.

Luka the Dog is reliable as an alarm clock again, not just for AM and PM kibbles but now for an afternoon stroll. Some times we head into the woods, it's muddy but I'm on the hunt for "sheds" – it's the time of year when bucks shed their antlers. With any luck, we'll find good multi-point specimens before nutrient-hungry mice, squirrels and other nibblers collect their due.

Other times we visit the neighbor who's lost much of her memory and recently, her little dog. On a long leash that keeps the humans socially distanced, Luka's just the right height for leg leans, lap pets and head butts insisting on more of the same.

It's good to get out, cautiously and safely for sure, but yes, out.

PS Don't forget! Next Sunday, that's March 14th, we "spring forward" in the spring time change.

PPS How early is Easter this year? April 4th! It's not even the earliest Easter, which can be as early as March 22 (the last time that happened was 1818) or as late as April 25th (last time was 1943).

About the Photo By Popular Request, a Little Insight into the Top Image: Hello, pussy willow season!

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PICK ONE

Pick One is for those of us overwhelmed by life's unending choices. If that resonates, then check out this one recipe and then call it a day. It's one that I think could make the most difference, the one I hope will become a regular in your kitchen, as it is in mine.

• THE RECIPE Milk-Braised Pork Roast Be it ever so humble, milky good.
• WHY THIS, WHY NOW Funny story! FIRST! All week, I'd been hankering a pork roast. But I didn't add one to our grocery order, knowing we're focused on meat from the freezer, mostly beef, because this year's beef delivery is nearly upon us. SECOND! In the car on Friday, my husband casually mentioned, "I'm hungry for a pork roast." I laughed out loud at my resident beef advocate. AND THEN On the way home, we stopped at the butcher's and brought home two pork roasts, one for today's dinner, another for the freezer. FOUR Maybe there's a pork roast in your future?

What's New?!

Wondering about a recipe from the last while? Check Recent Recipes from Kitchen Parade and Recent Vegetable Recipes from A Veggie Venture.

• THE RECIPE Perfect Hard-Cooked Eggs For meal prep, deviled eggs, egg salad and more.
• ANOTHER TAKE How to Poach a Perfect Egg Step-by-step using Cook's Illustrated technique.

• THE REVIEW Trader Joe's Melodious Blend Product Review
• MORE REVIEWS Trader Joe's Product Reviews

Vegetable Casseroles for Spring

• THE RECIPE Creamy Spinach with Artichokes Spinach artichoke dip meets steakhouse creamed spinach.
• ANOTHER TAKE Greek Spinach-Asparagus-Potato Gratin (Spinaki me Sparaggia Orgraten) A bit of a production but the best "creamed spinach" ever.

• THE RECIPE Tourlou Tourlou (Greek Baked Vegetables) A rainbow of vegetables slow-cooked in the oven.
• ANOTHER TAKE Greek Baked Beans (Gigantes Plaki) Cooked til creamy in the oven.

• THE RECIPE Finnish Carrot Casserole
• ANOTHER TAKE Creamy Carrot Purée

Major Minor Holiday Alert!

C'mon, people. March is packed with celebration ideas but this year, of ALL the years, let's not forget the mathematics-inspired "Pi Day" next Sunday, that's March 14th, also 3/14 ... get it? "Pi" = 3.1416 and so on. Now get it?

Not let's make a pie! Or some mini pie bites!

Not into crust? Just make Banana Cream Pudding!

• THE RECIPE Coconut Cream Pie How to move grown men to silence.
• ANOTHER TAKE Easy-Easy Chocolate Coconut Pudding Just five ingredients and ten minutes to pudding.

• THE RECIPE Frozen Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie A creamy concoction, with just a hint of peanut butter and a drizzle of chocolate.
• GREAT NO-ROLL CRUST My Favorite Graham Cracker Crust A crisp, sturdy crust, not too sweet, not too buttery.

• THE RECIPE Mini Blueberry Tarts With a "pop" of fresh blueberry right in the middle.
• THE ORIGINAL Finnish Fruit Tart Finns adore this with blueberries.

The Dinner Bell

Seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, the dinner bell rings. If we're gonna eat, somebody's gotta cook. Let's make it good, a welcome end to our days.

• THE RECIPE Slow-Cooked Greens & Smoked Turkey So good, you'll want to eat the pot.
• ANOTHER TAKE Red Beans & Rice Slow-cooked Creole comfort food.

• THE RECIPE Easy Baked Fish with Red Pepper & Cucumber Salad, a Quick Supper, made with pantry ingredients.
• ANOTHER TAKE Herb-Coated Broiled Fish Fish filets coated in fresh herbs, then broiled. So simple, yet seductive.

• THE RECIPE White Chicken Chili An old favorite, a little lighter.
• ANOTHER TAKE My Chicken Noodle Soup The way I make it, meaty and noodle-y with just a few noodles.

Put an Egg on Top aka "How About Eggs for Dinner?"

Why should breakfast get all the eggs?! If eggs for dinner were a club, I'd be president, chief marketing officer, resident evangelist, public advocate and ... hey, wanna join my club? Start here!

• THE RECIPE Never-the-Same-Twice Vegetable Frittata Protein-packed with silky texture.
• ANOTHER TAKE How to Make a Spinach Omelet

Word Dancing for Language Lovers

Topophilia ... love of place; a vivid, emotional and even spiritual connection to a certain spot or area

Corona Coaster ... the ups and downs of the pandemic. One day you're loving your bubble, doing workouts, baking banana bread and going for long walks and the next you're crying, drinking gin for breakfast and missing people you don't even like. That's the Facebook version ... what's yours? There are definite ups and downs. Where are you, let's say, this very today??? I'm in climb mode ...

Recipes That Stand the Test of Time

To mark A Veggie Venture's 15th anniversary in 2020, I took a hard look at the first 365 vegetable recipes from the first year to select just 15 which, all these many years and recipes later, remain ever so useful. The result is a fascinating collection of recipes, 15 Favorite Vegetable Recipes, Still Useful After 15 Years. Here's just one.

• THE RECIPE Swedish Red Cabbage & Apples Savory not sweet.
• ANOTHER TAKE Cabbage Noodles Ribbons of soft, silky cabbage, almost like pasta.

PS Who's noticed? I'm big on "usefulness". See? Best-Ever “Most Useful” Recipes 2002 – Present, just one recipe per year from Kitchen Parade.

Made Me Think ...

• Who else has a second fridge? A stand-alone freezer? More than a few of us!
• Read When One Fridge Is Not Enough from the New York Times
• TAKEAWAY "About 27 percent of today’s urban homes and almost 40 percent of rural ones have at least two refrigerators. Those numbers will likely change again as the pandemic continues and with the average 10-year life span of newer refrigerators. When stand-alone freezers sold out in stores nationwide in the spring of 2020, months of back orders set off a buying spree on refrigerators."


• How to save the world, one slice of good rye bread at a time. Y'know, like Swedish Rye Bread which gets so many rave reviews.
• Read Remarkable Rye is a Sustainability Superstar from King Arthur
• TAKEAWAY "You and I, with our love for baking, can make a difference by simply supporting the market. Rye is versatile — in addition to all the traits that make it great for my artisan breads, I also don’t make pie crusts or puff pastry without adding rye for more flavorful and tender versions of my standard hits. Every cupful counts, so let’s start scooping. More rye in biscuits, more clean air, less algae in our lakes and streams, and fewer chemicals added to our soil."

Soups & Salads Especially for March

March is such a funny month for cooking, some wintry days (yo, soups!), some spring-like days (hey, salads!) and so many days neither one nor the other, just smack in the middle. So what grabs us depends on the day, yes? That's why I spent a year gathering all of A Veggie Venture's best soup and salad recipes into easy-to-scan month-by-month collections.

Dig into Seasonal Soup & Salad Recipes for March, tons of ideas!

Here's a sample!

• THE RECIPE Cream of Celery Soup Way more than the sum of its parts.
• ANOTHER TAKE Laura's Healthy Carrot Soup Creamy without a drop of cream.

Timehop

Who else loves seeing old photos pop up, quick memories from years past? Welcome to a recipe timehop ...

• THE RECIPE Spinach Soup with Perfect Hard-Cooked Eggs A soup flushed with spring.
• ANOTHER TAKE Laura's Healthy Carrot Soup Creamy without a drop of cream.

• THE RECIPE Weight Watchers Mexican "Zero Points" Soup It's spicy!
• ANOTHER TAKE Weight Watchers Zero Points Garden Vegetable Soup The original Weight Watchers soup.

Trending

My Top 10 Recipes are predictable, hello Ham 101: What to Know Before Buying a Ham and Weight Watchers Zero Points Garden Vegetable Soup. But every week, seasonal recipes catch the internet's attention and start to trend.

• THE RECIPE Best-Ever Lentil Salad
• ANOTHER TAKE Summer Lentils

Something to Read: Finding Your Next Book

How do you find your "next" book? Hive mind, share your ideas, won't you please?

Here are my contributions ...

• NPR's Book Concierge is amazing.
• If I'm borrowing digital books or audio books from the library (the Libby system works great) or looking for books for my book club, I go back two or three or more years.
• My favorite filters are "seriously great writing" and "rather long" and "book club ideas" and "staff picks". Total resource!


• The Cup of Jo blog every so often asks followers for book recommendations. I recently mined the comments in this post and have found many intriguing books whose titles are new to me. It's a good mix of fiction, memoir and non-fiction.
• My own contribution to the comments? Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell, I'm still thinking about this book.


• WANT TO READ MORE? How I Read 4X More This Year Than Last What I gave up, how I read so much, what I read.

Just Updated!

• THE RECIPE Lemony Broccoli Salad with Lemon Vinaigrette
• ANOTHER TAKE Roasted Broccoli with Lemon & Garlic

• THE RECIPE Roasted Broccoli with Lemon & Garlic
• ANOTHER TAKE Lemony Broccoli Salad with Lemon Vinaigrette

Don't Be a Stranger ...

I'd love to hear from you. Comment, send me a quick e-mail via recipes@kitchen-parade.com, dot-dash in Morse code, build a fire for smoke signals, launch a message in a bottle, send a Christmas letter, get the dog to yip, toss me a note wrapped in a rubberband, write a message in the sky, scratch a note in the sand, listen to a seashell, whatever.

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Kitchen Parade is written by second-generation food columnist Alanna Kellogg and features fresh, seasonal dishes for every-day healthful eating and occasional indulgences. Quick Suppers are Kitchen Parade favorites and feature recipes easy on the budget, the clock, the waistline and the dishwasher. Do you have a favorite recipe that other Kitchen Parade readers might like? Just send me a quick e-mail via recipes@kitchen-parade.com. How to print a Kitchen Parade recipe. Never miss a recipe! If you like this recipe, sign up for a free e-mail subscription. If you like Kitchen Parade, you're sure to like my food blog about vegetable recipes, too, A Veggie Venture. If you make this recipe, I'd love to know your results! Just leave a comment below.

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