Tag: spring

Make This Now: Recipes for Spring

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I actually don’t know what makes these spring recipes, except maybe that I made them in spring?  And there’s fresh herbs?  And they’re neither full on winter comfort food nor grill-friendly summer food?  Who knows!  I just know these were all insanely delicious and I feel very eager to pass them along to you so you can enjoy them too ♥

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Ejjeh Quiche

Cilantro, parsley, mint, green onion!  I’d had this recipe saved for soooo long and finally bit the bullet, then had no idea why I’d waited so long because it was truly flavor-packed and amazing.  I was filled with such happiness every time I cut myself a slice.  Oh and I sent the above picture to Joey one night when, due to extracurricular activities, we spent dinnertime separately and challenged him to replicate it.  He sent me back my own picture (expressionless face emoji).

Full disclosure: I used my mom’s crust recipe because it’s unequivocally the best and I need no other crust recipe in my life.

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Sweet Potato Grain Bowls with Turmeric Honey Mustard

I’ve been very into this blog — Dishing Out Health — lately.  Unsurprisingly, since the author is a recipe developer for Cooking Light and as you know, I’ve been a CL reader for many many years.  Joey and I were immediately in love with this grain bowl because A) it tasted so so good (that honey mustard sauce is killer!) and B) it was so dang simple and easy to put together.  How dare simplicity taste this good!

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Wild Salmon with Horseradish-Mustard Sauce + All the Green Things Salad

This dinner was a team effort (Joey made the salmon, I made the salad) and I was so blown away by the final product!  We were skeptical of the salmon cooking method because cooking it on the stove-top AND flipping it aren’t things we usually do with fish but it was so incredible and had the best crispy skin, plus you should just know I love anything involving horseradish.  The salad was chock-full of, you guessed it, green things and they all tasted so fresh and bright tossed in that lemony vinaigrette.  I may or may not have been doing a little happy dance the entire time I ate this plate of food 🙂

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Spring Pea Veggie Burgers

It’s pretty clear what makes this a spring recipe… it’s right in the title!  But also because it includes every green spring produce to ever exist.  Every veggie burger is a game of Will They or Won’t They Hold Together but these held together SO WELL and tasted even better.  I know I already blabbed about how good these were in my Weekend Things post so I’ll stop now but… just… MAKE THESE, okay?

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In other news:

More of our tulips have popped open this week and I’m mesmerized by their vibrant colors, 

We decided to stop letting our dog sleep in bed with us and though he’s mostly been okay with it, we sometimes can’t look him in the eyes at night,

I ate a taco comprised of one single Brussels sprout, cut in half and topped with a spicy crema and I’m never doing that again,

It’s Friday!  Have a good weekend!

Weekend Things

Lauren1 Comment

Mother Nature has been so cruel lately, giving us perfectly warm spring weather during the week then letting it rain all weekend.  But, last week she turned it around, meaning we had THEE BEST weather all weekend and as a result, we were able to clean up our yard, plant our garden, eat meal after meal outside and I just truly felt like my happiest self.  Our doggy even got to join us outside and I was like, “Andi, this is our summer life, isn’t it the best?!”  He concurred… then barked at a squirrel for 15 minutes.

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Friday, we headed home, walked Andi and mixed up these Spring Pea Veggie Burgers from Joy the Baker for dinner.  As meat eaters, we’re pretty pro-real burger but these were SO GOOD!  They held together NO PROBLEM, and decked out with cucumber slices, watercress, avocado, mustard and most importantly, a perfectly spicy Sriracha mayo, they tasted truly incredible.  Would have been the perfect opportunity to actually grill a burger (had I planned better), but we compensated by grilling some sweet potato discs.  Joey gifted me the very last can of Madame Psychosis from Fiction Beer Company.  In other words, this was a perfect night!

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Briefly considered Saturday morning waffles but then the idea of defrosting buttermilk, zesting a lemon and waiting for butter to melt then cool was all too much, so I mixed up our super simple go-to whole wheat pancake batter instead and wasn’t mad about it.  Also, we filled a growler of iced coffee on Friday and that’s how you ensure that the rest of the weekend is good.  Plus we needed all the caffeine for an afternoon of yard work!

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We maybe spent way too much time and way too much money at Paulino Gardens but we finally made it back home and to the backyard.  Joey did most all the hard stuff, but I planted our backyard pot and front porch buckets and I’m so in love with them!  How incredible are those stripped and speckled petunias??  We tag-teamed the garden bed and now our tulips — one of which finally opened up! — don’t look so lonely.

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Later on, I left Joey in the backyard and hit the grocery but then I came home and we cleaned up just in time for my sister to come over so we could all go to dinner ♥  We took her to Meadowlark and look, I feel conflicted about giving away this secret, but this might be one of the best restaurants in Denver.  I didn’t even know they had a back area but that’s where they sat us, so we got to be half inside/half outside and it felt perfectly summery.  We split a burrata dip with fried naan, a spring salad, chicken nuggets and the famous Meadowlark burger.  I’m kicking myself for taking an Instagram video and not an actual picture, because it was CRAZY.  Look it up!  Also, it tasted incredible.

Back at home, we all watched Tragedy Girls and it was super quirky and weird and gruesome and inappropriate but enjoyably so?  We think we liked it.

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Sunday started with another 5-mile run.  We did it in 47-something minutes, which is really fast for me and probably explains why I felt dead at the end.  We recovered with carrot cake overnight oats from The Savvy Cook and I think I want to make them again!  The rest of the day involved making Chili Mango Zesty Quinoa Salads for lunch this week — I’ve been cooking beans in our pressure cooker and even though I keep overcooking them, it’s been a fun experiment — and finishing up garden stuff, aka planting our seeds.

We jotted down some notes at the end of last year so hopefully we’ve refined the process just a bit more for this growing season.  I’m mainly excited for speckled lettuces!  It’s a bit more work — water, weed, harvest, repeat — but now that things are planted and there’s LIFE growing in the backyard, all feels right in the world.  We ended Sunday by watching 6 Balloons and while I didn’t LOVE it, I liked it and still thought it made for a perfect end to a perfect weekend.