Spring Recipes

Happy First Day of Spring from sunny, Minneapolis!  It’s a balmy 18 degrees, with a cool breeze making it feel -7, UGH!  Everyone I know is itching for it to warm up.  It’s just been too long since we’ve seen anything green.  I rounded up a few spring recipes to send out some warm vibes and encourage spring to hurry up and get here.

*please note, all photos below are from their respective sites*
**also note, this is kind of a random meal but I wish this was all fresh and available right now**

We’ll start things off with a refreshing drink from the ladies of Spoon Fork Bacon

Follow that up with Asparagus & Pea Soup from Tartelette, to warm ourselves back up

We’ll keep it green for another moment here and follow up the soup with a Pea Salad with Radish and Feta Cheese from Epicurious

Photo By: Brian Leatart

For our main dish, we’ll dig into Mustard Crusted Pork with Farro and Carrot Salad from the folks at Bon Appetit.  Did I mention sweatpants are encouraged for dinner attire?

And finally, we end with Roasted Strawberry Goat Cheese Squares for dessert, from The Kitchn

…and then maybe some Martha Stewart Peaches and Cream Popsicles…

Photo by: Johnny Miller

…and then one more cocktail to top it all off… Cheers to Spring!

from TheKitchn.com

Juices and Salad Dressing

As I mentioned yesterday, last weekend I tried doing a 3 day juice cleanse.  I’ve been hearing about them from a few different blogs and a few friends at work had tried them so I was pretty curious what it was all about.  I followed the Suja cleanse.  I went that route because it was available at a couple different Whole Foods in the area and was one of the less expensive options.  You can read all about it on their site, here.  Day 1 and 2 weren’t too bad.  I didn’t get nearly as hungry as I thought I would be, although I did have an apple with my lunch juice on Saturday and a hand full of grapes Friday afternoon.  I was pretty proud of myself at the end of the day Saturday.  Then Sunday came around and I just wanted a cheeseburger.  I made it through without caving into temptation but I was way too excited for a bowl of oatmeal this morning.

Photo from http://www.sujajuice.com

Overall, the experience was, well, different.  I didn’t feel ultra amazing at the end of 3 days, but besides wanting a cheeseburger I didn’t feel bad either.  The 6 juices a day kept me from getting very hungry.  By the time my stomach would start to growl it was time for the next juice.  Most of the juices were pretty tasty, especially the Vanilla Cloud at the end of the day.  The one awesome positive was losing some weight, in total around 8 pounds in 3 days!  We’ll see if it stays that way.

After juicing for 3 days, it’s recommended that you ease back into foods focusing on soups and salads (I’m saving the cheeseburger for this weekend).  I had a plain salad today to make sure my body was cool with moving back to real food.  No surprise to me, it was fine.  I’m going to keep bringing salads for the week though, so I’m going to try this new salad dressing I found online at Closet Cooking.  I didn’t have any grainy mustard on hand so I swapped that out for the dijon and added in some honey mustard.  I’ll be bringing it in for the rest of the week and let you know how it goes.