The Early Spring Kitchen
I love winter menus most of all. Soups, stews, pot roasts, casseroles, chili. Winter meals feed a crowd and taste warm, filling, and comforting. I yearn for these dinners, and find menu planning to be easy and accessible. As we head into Spring, I feel ready to shed the “heaviness” of that fare, but also struggle to find meals that deeply satisfy. We aren’t quite ready for the grill-centered meals of summer, but are ready to not have ground beef, chuck roasts, or shredded chicken quite so much.
A good way to begin to transition our kitchens from one season to another is to understand what is currently in our pantries and freezers. It’s time to figure out how to eat what we have, reorganize, and thaw meats that need to be used. When we are in a transition month, which is how I view March, we eat up the bits and bobs of the season we are leaving behind. We are cleaning out, making room, lightening up. Today I am thawing some Italian sausages to roast with vegetables, some Tomato Basil Parmesan Soup, and threw out some old frost-bitten grilled chicken tenderloins.
Then I will scroll through my recipes that I keep stored in Plan to Eat to see what recipes speak Spring to me. I know that I love this Orzo Salad (I use goat cheese and no basil) and this Lemon Orzo soup. I like to bake salmon and serve it with lovely springtime asparagus and rice. Easy Greek Chicken makes an appearance along with Oven Chicken Risotto. Roasted Shrimp with Broccoli. I serve salads at most meals year-round, but this is the time of year when they start becoming dinner salads—instead of tacos, I make taco salad. It’s nice to keep things simpler with one skillet or one pan meals that take less than 30 minutes to make. This is the time of year we spend time cleaning our yards, taking longer walks, playing outside with our children, and feel the fatigue of pollen (at least here in the South!) so we want to keep meals fresh and simple.
How about you? Do you change your menus seasonally like I do? Do you find yourself wanting the fresh local produce from the farmers’ markets and ways to capture the bliss of early sweet strawberries? When you think of springtime dinners, what comes to mind? I would love to hear.
Cleaning out and planning,
Aimee