springtime!

[Blackdog Lin]

My favorite forum here, and we're all just languishing with no new threads. And it's springtime! New beginnings!

So, I'll start with some (probably boring) musings. We've been picking the wild onion patch, and went out asparagus hunting twice last week. Not a good year here for asparagus, yet we still managed to gather over 5 lbs. of the stuff. First batch went to Italian pasta salad, using the wild onions too. Awesome, I love cooking with basically free food. Second asparagus batch was steamed and buttered and eaten with fresh-frozen crappie filets, which was also basically free, having been bartered. And this morning I made my first ever Quiche Lorraine (w/asparagus) using up stuff in the pantry/freezer that needed used and the wild onions, and it turned out incredible (with apologies to Lorraine for my use of cheddar instead of swiss. I had no swiss in the house.)

And there was a 10-lb. bag of chicken quarters in the freezer that needed used, so got DH to take advantage of the good weather yesterday and he grilled half of it, and I boiled the other half. We have 2 meals worth of grilled pieces (tomorrow's menu is grilled chicken and scalloped corn), plus a half-gallon and a quart of chicken broth, plus 2 ziplocks of cooked chicken shreds. I plan for chicken-n-noodles later in the week, and the other bag will get used soon enough.

I spent the winter all atwitter over trying new recipes and techniques (and collected several new favorites), but lately I've been feeling that I've been neglecting our old family favorites. Hence the fried fish and the pasta salad and the scalloped corn. I guess it's a cooking phase I'm going through, to go back and focus menus more on our old favorites.

So, people. What cooking/eating phases are you going through, with springtime?!!! Any foraging for free springtime food?

[meri]

We are having very warm spring here this year which means a long season for young nettle plants. I used to love tea from dried nettles but don't have space to dry them or any other wild herbs and plants now.
But fresh nettles are excellent replacement for spinach so I've made 'spinach' lasagne and omelets with 'spinach' and cheese and 'spinach' filled buns for my husband and daughter and sneaked some nettle into a vegetable soup and green peas soup for all of us.
It's healthy, tasty and free. You just need a pair of good gloves to harvest it :)

[awakenedsoul]

I've been making artichokes a lot lately. I simmer them in water with homemade Italian salad dressing and fresh lemons from my tree. Just made a tuna and noodles. It's inexpensive and delicious. I've been picking some of the Valencia oranges off of my tree. It's a little early to be picking them. They're really better in the summer, but still tasty. Soon I will have figs, apricots, and cherries from the orchard. I've been eating through my pantry and freezer, and will stock up again next month. So, it's been lots of brown rice, barely, and veggies from the co op. I like making bone broths and soups, too. They help my joints. I use up the chicken carcasses in the freezer that way...

[gimmethesimplelife]

Pretty much we are moving beyond Spring here in Phoenix, Arizona. After I get this illness I am dealing with squared away, I promised myself a reward would be planting things in the backyard that do well here in the summer. Such as okra (loves, loves, loves the intense heat and later mugginess of a Phoenix summer), sunflowers, eggplants, basil, maybe a cantelope or two. Looking forward to this! Also as I've posted elsewhere major dietary changes are in my future regardless of how bad bad off my pancreas is, so I may well be able to converse here with those who shop at the farmer's market. I will be going there a bit and also to Sprouts to eat better. Rob