Two strawberry salads, great ways to show off spring strawberries. The first strawberry salad is so special, it's worth saving for tender home-grown strawberries. But no worry, the second strawberry salad works beautifully with supermarket strawberries. Both use Candied Almonds, gorgeous orbs of nutty sweetness. ~ Skip Straight to the Recipes ~ ~ Strawberry Pepper Salad ~ ~ Strawberry Spinach Salad with Homemade Poppy Seed Dressing ~ ~ Candied Almonds ~ COMPLIMENTS! "Holy moly ... may be the world's best use of strawberries." ~ Jo Beth "Strawberries with almonds and parmesan and pepper.... mmm!" ~ Anonymous Waiting, Waiting, Waiting ... Each year, as the last days of May slip into the first hours of June, the local strawberries are fat and juicy and perfect. The season seems to last a whole ten seconds, a couple of weeks at most – but only in a good year, for reality depends on sun and rain and temperature, the unpredictabili

Easy Bundt cake recipe, buttery and moist, studded with berries. Inexpensive to make too since it uses frozen fruit. Very pretty on a plate. Barely sweet, so perfect as brunch cake or my favorite, as dessert, served with coffee. Before Mother’s Day, the big downtown farmers market is awash with fresh flowers of all colors, just as the folk shopping there week after week for price and freshness includes Moms of all stripes. There’s the suburban Mom sporting a trim wicker basket, hair just blown, feet just pedicured in chic sandals. There’s the soccer Mom with a mini-vanful of kids, some even her own, hair pulled back, feet in Keds. There’s the mother-in-law Mom recently arrived from Russia to join her son and his American family, hair off-red, feet in heel-worn laced oxfords. There’s the new Mom with an infant Bjorned on her chest, hair barely combed, feet in flip flops. There’s the Muslim Mom, hair veiled in an elegant hijab, feet in Adidas. There’s the love-generation Mom