Spring

The weather can't seem to decide what it wants to do, in turn making it hard to decide what to eat: something comforting and cheesy or something fresher and green? I decided the only solution was to combine the two.

One of the great American dishes has got to be macaroni and cheese. Gooey, cheesy and rich with a slight crunch on the top it is pure goodness in a casserole dish. The one problem I have with macaroni and cheese is the guilt. It's soooo rich, it's not the healthiest dish in the world.

One way to make a dish healthier is to cut back on the rich ingredients, like the milk, butter and cheese. Well, that's no fun! I'd rather add in some heathy but tasty stuff as a compromise that really doesn't feel like a compromise at all. My healthy additions are some peas and artichoke hearts, both tasty Spring arrivals. They both go particularly well with gruyere cheese. And gruyere is a perfect cheese for macaroni and cheese.

Sometimes it’s all about the cut. Take asparagus. Everyone loves the long, lanky, sexy look of a whole asparagus spear. (Sorry—sounds like I’m describing a brand of Gap jeans). Why would you want to wreck that by cutting it up?

Oh, yeah, there’s that awkward moment when you’re trying to cut those long spears with a fork on your dinner plate.

And the even more awkward moment when you push the woody bottom half of the spears over to the side of your plate because they’re undercooked.

Now consider this—with a few extra seconds of work upfront, you can have a beautiful, evenly cooked, easy-to-eat asparagus side dish that can take on a variety of flavors, too.

So I’m going to ignore my mother (who claims I tend to get a bit fussy about my vegetable cuts), and suggest that you try slicing your asparagus on the diagonal (sharply…at a sharp angle…on the bias…however you want to say it) for a change.

The cook's year can be divided in two: tomato and not-tomato. But sometimes, even the best-intentioned, most locavore-crazy among us so crave a sweet, tart bite in our salads that we break down and grab one of those cottony out-of-season tennis balls. You've done it too. Don't try to deny it.

In some cases, though, there's an easy alternative. Because happily for us, beneficent nature has ensured that the not-tomato months pair up perfectly with the drowning-in-citrus ones. And in a lot of dishes, a little bit of citrus will give you just what you were hankering for — certainly a lot better than an out-of-season tomato.

This is not a universal solution by any means. I'm trying to picture laying a slice of grapefruit on top of my hamburger. But it does work out often enough that it's worth exploring.

The first time I tried it was more or less by accident. It was dinner time, and I had some lettuce and some cheese. And not much else. But wait, my neighbors Don and Carol had dropped off a sack of tangerines from their tree — perfectly balanced between tart and sweet. What if I put some of those in the salad along with some hazelnuts?

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When I first wrote about quinoa two years ago, many of you empathized. You too had gone to a supermarket and asked someone where you could find the kwi-NO-ah. Not anymore. Quinoa (pronounced keen-WAH) is no longer just the baby of vegans; it has gone mainstream.

Case in point: the Point Loma, CA Trader Joe's last Sunday. As I was looking for some whole wheat couscous, I overheard the guy next to me say to his wife, "Hey, hon. Is this the keen-WAH you want?" He pronounced it perfectly, without the slightest hesitation. Of course, I had to look. No, he wasn't dressed in a chef's jacket and orange Crocs. In fact, he was a military guy – there's a naval base in Point Loma – tall and muscular with a crew cut. And his carriage had lots of red meat and eggs in it, not tofu or sprouts.