A traditional spinach salad with bacon, hard-cooked eggs, mushrooms. Such a classic and ever so satisfying. Plus bonus: a great way to use leftover Easter eggs. ~ Skip Straight to the Recipe ~ Just before the green begins there is the hint of green
 a blush of color, and the red buds thicken
 the ends of the maple's branches and everything
 is poised before the start of a new world,
 which is really the same world
 just moving forward from bud
 to flower to blossom to fruit
 to harvest to sweet sleep, and the roots 
 await the next signal - from "April Prayer" by poet Stuart Kestenbaum via Writer's Almanac Finally, Spring! Spring eased into Missouri some time in the past weeks, overnight, it must have been, since on no one day was its arrival a certainty. In the local paper, the letters to the editor take on this new season’s controversy, whether chickens, especially the crowing roosters, make good neighbors. More families, it seems, are put

A new cooking lesson, how to make homemade chicken stock. Lots of tips and techniques, my own and Michael Ruhlman's, from his new book "Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking". ~ Skip Straight to the Recipe ~ "Cook" Books vs "Recipe" Books: Which One Suits You? My kitchen bookshelves sag under cookbooks, the basement is home to two decades of food magazines. Author Michael Ruhlman wants us to call these not "cook" books but "recipe" books. Recipe books, he says, teach us to follow recipes; cook books teach us to cook . But acceptance is a virtue and me, I accept that I’m a recipe cook. Turning the pages of cookbooks and magazines, I experience the thrill of the hunt, the possibility of discovery: be still, my heart! Still, deep within, I long to be released from the shackles of recipes. In the cooking of my mind, I stand before a well-stocked pantry and a just-filled refrigerator, grab a few th

The oh-so-special braided Armenian Easter bread, called "choereg" or some times "choreg". It's a buttery sweet bread, fragrant with an addictive spice called "mahleb" or some times "mahlab". Best of all, the pastry can be made in advance and keeps just beautifully. Many thanks to Cyndi, a Kitchen Parade reader, for sharing her family's special Easter bread! Old Family Recipes Are the Best! A Celebration Bread for Easter. Tastes Better and Better Over a Few Days. Freezes Well.

How to bake pork chops with rice in the oven in one skillet, a simple satisfying meal. Baking pork chops and rice yields tender, fall-apart chops and tasty rice. This is the very first meal I ever cooked, memorable for reasons good and bad! An Old-Fashioned One-Pot Dinner, True Comfort Food. High Protein. Weight Watchers Friendly.

An unusual fruit salad, savory and sweet at the same time. This easy recipe takes familiar ingredients like fresh fruit, almonds and cilantro and turns them upside down. Start with your favorite fruit – so far I've tried grapes, mango and apples – and then just stir in the rest, including a touch of salt, a key ingredient. There you go, fruit salad in a whole new way! Real Food, Fresh & Flexible. Simple Healthy Dessert or Breakfast Salad. Not just easy, Summer Easy . Budget Friendly. Weeknight Easy, Weekend Special. Easily Scales from Grape Salad for One or Two to Grape Salad for Big Groups. No Added Sugar. Low Fat. Weight Watchers Friendly. Not just vegan, Vegan Done Real . Naturally Gluten Free. Whole30 Friendly.

My first and forever-and-forever favorite recipe for banana bread, rich with banana flavor, very banana-y. (That's thanks to very ripe bananas, even my favorite "black bananas"!) It calls for whole-wheat flour and wheat germ, so the recipe is even half healthful. But what really makes this banana bread special? Poppy seeds and those bright-red cheery cherries! Homemade Banana Bread, Made from Scratch. Real Food, Fresh & Inventive. Year-Round Kitchen Staple. Budget Friendly. Weeknight Easy, Weekend Special. Potluck & Party Friendly.

Kitchen Parade celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2009 with a collection of my mother's favorite recipes, even her very own columns. In 1959, my mother Shirley started writing Kitchen Parade for our family newspaper in a small town in northern Minnesota. She was a young wife and new mother then, also a home economist and city girl finding her place in a small town. Week in, week out, she wrote her Kitchen Parade column for twelve years and only stopped when our family moved away. After my mother's death in 2002, I resurrected Kitchen Parade in my own style, and later began publishing here online KitchenParade.com . If there's one thing to know about my mother, it's that she loved a party! So in 2009, to celebrate Kitchen Parade's 50th anniversary, I featured many of Mom's favorite recipes, including – it was fun! – some from her very own columns published in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s! Readers learned to watch for these special recipes – Kitchen Parad

Erin go braugh, me lassies and laddies. Tis time for a wee muffin, perhaps with a cuppa tea? So fire up the oven, you'll be sittin' down in no time, happy to bite into a hot bit of bread with just a touch tad of caraway but plenty-for-sure, of dried fruit . Homemade Muffins Made from Scratch, a Muffin Riff on Irish Soda Bread. Fun for St. Patrick's Day Celebrations. Just 45 Minutes to the Table. Fun Picnic Food. Budget Friendly. Easy DIY. Vegetarian. Rave Reviews.

For generations, Gashouse Eggs have been family favorites, collecting dozens of clever, amusing names. Now there’s a new game in town, the Mexican Gashouse Egg, an egg fried in a tortilla with a hole in the center. Yep, it's that easy! Real Food, Fresh & Flexible. Weekday Easy, Weekend Special. Weight Watchers Friendly.

Who knew that lasagna noodles needn't be cooked before baking the lasagna? Here are two oh-so-easy lasagna recipes, one for a 'personal pan lasagna' perfect for cooking for one or two, another for lasagna made in the crockpot. “I never cook anymore, now that it’s just me,” say women, especially, once their families are grown and their husbands gone. Often, it’s just easier to rely on frozen meals. That means no cooking, no waste and no clean-up – but to my mind, no pleasure, either. So I’ve been working on recipes especially suited for cooking for one or two, ones which I hope perfectly blend convenience and freshness, flavor and pleasure. SPINACH DIP The lasagna’s spinach mixture double-duties as spinach dip, too, perfect for spreading on crackers or tucking into an omelet or packing into the slit of a thick pork chop. Use the same ingredients, just sauté the onion in a little water or oil before combining with the spinach, ricotta and seasonings. CRO