When I'm Too Excited About Arugula to Notice Anything Else

How did I go to the farmer's market today and not notice that this was also happening in the park? 

I'll have to head back tomorrow for some shopping. 

Another recent discovery is this park on the East River. It isn't exactly in our neighborhood, but the walk isn't too bad. And there's sand there. No lie. And the view looks like this:

Gorgonzola!

This is my new favorite veggie meal. Chris deserves all the credit. Okay, maybe Ocean Boulevard deserves a little credit, because the inspiration for this meal came from a dinner we had there last spring. 

Kale recently replaced collards as my favorite leafy green. I wash it well, remove the stem in the middle of the leaves, and tear the leaves up a bit. I put a little butter into a pan and add the kale. Once it has cooked for a few minutes I add a little honey and balsamic vinegar, cook for another minute or two and it's done! 

To go with the kale for our dinner pictured above, Chris dabbed a little olive oil on some slices of bread and toasted them. Then he caramelized some onions and topped it all off with some gorgonzola cheese. 

Wunderkind

My niece and nephew came for a visit. It rained the entire time (we're going on five days in a row now) and they didn't mind a bit. We had all kinds of fun. They planted some seeds themselves. 

I was telling them about the different seeds I had, and I described one packet this way: "these are a mix of white, pink, and red flowers." To which T replied, "hmm, sounds like cosmos." He planted cosmos (clearly he is a fan) and daisies. Ry planted sunflowers, cosmos, and Shasta daisies. We recycled a take-out sushi container for their seeds. Eight large peat pellets fit just fine, but the lid was a close fit. T wanted to turn the seed growing into a competition, and he wrote out some rules on the back of their seed labels. 

Our favorite produce stand Tarheel Too is now open! I bought some local asparagus and it was amazing. I couldn't get over the purple tips. 

 

I added a little olive oil, salt, and pepper and did a quick broil. Which means I put it in the oven on broil, checked it, decided it needed just another minute, forgot about it, remembered it, then ran to the oven to pull it out. And they were cooked perfectly! Works every time. 

I also cooked shad roe and lemon rice. This is supposed to be a quintessential spring meal. I found the recipe here.