Confession: I put my go-to recipes here so that I can always pull them up on my phone when I need them. That way, instead of having a bazillion bookmarks, I have one, with all my favorite links here. Genius, right? I think so too.

Which is what leads me to this post. Really, it’s just a bunch of links with my notes on how I make them, because as we all know, I’m a lazy food blogger. Which also means I have zero photos of any of these. I also don’t necessarily want to take credit for the origin of these recipes nor do I really feel like writing several different posts blathering on about well, whatever it is real food bloggers talk about. And so, with no further ado, here’s a few of my current favorite dishes that are on rotation as we move from winter to spring produce. You might notice there’s a lot of greens involved because yes, we’ve gotten to the point of the year where Greens, it’s what’s for dinner. I’ve got a slew of kale, collards and arugula in the garden currently, some planted earlier this year that are ready to land on the table and some that over-wintered and are still going strong.

This may be a swiss chard salad recipe, but I also find it works beautifully with other dark leafy greens in the garden, like kale and collard greens, even arugula (which is not a dark leafy green but I seem to have in abundance). It’s ridiculously fast and easy to make. My notes on this are as follows: I add some crushed red pepper and some of the lemon zest with the garlic while cooking the croutons. I often skip the Parmesan cheese and I also will let this salad sit for a bit before serving, particularly with greens that can handle being broken down by the dressing as it sits. For croutons, I use whatever stale bread I have on hand, although I’ll admit I’ve been baking loaves of bread *just* so I have some to make croutons with. It’s made my swiss chard averse family actually eat it, so definitely give it a spin.

Also, that crouton method has become my absolute favorite. Heavy on the olive oil (and/or butter), toss some crushed red pepper and minced garlic in at the last. So good. As for how I prep my breadcrumbs – I use stale bread, cubed and toasted before turning it into croutons. I try to keep a jar of them in the fridge so I always have some on hand, ready to go. I’m on a serious crouton kick here recently. Did I mention I’ve been baking bread to ensure a steady supply of bread crumbs for croutons?

Another favorite thing I’ve been doing here recently is tossing lemon (or lime) zest in with whatever I’m cooking to boost the flavor. It works really well with this spaghetti with arugula & clams dish, another quick pantry meal. This is one of those rare recipes I found on the internet that I made as is and really liked it – although I didn’t use whole wheat pasta. But that feels trivial. This is a great weeknight meal that’s ready in the time it takes you to make a pot of pasta using pantry items. I do a similar version with canned tuna too. White beans are always a good addition to these sorts of dishes too.

This one I probably should take the time and give a proper write up because it’s really a mash-up of two recipes that really didn’t resemble either one by the time I was done. I took the dressing from this shredded collard greens salad, this idea of combining shrimp with my collards and was off to the races. I sauteed my shrimp in some sesame oil with garlic, ginger and lime zest, added peanuts and carrots to my raw collards and then tossed it all with some soba noodles for a full meal in a bowl. It was outstanding. I promise I will try to do a proper write up of it soon, because I think it’s going to be a great pot-luck dish as picnic season approaches, but in the meantime, I wanted to leave it here.

And last but not least, I made this edible cookie dough with my cooking class recently. It was a huge hit, if by hit you mean the children complained their teeth hurt from all the sugar and I absolutely lost control of the elementary school aged kids who were literally bouncing off walls and running in circles. I recognize there are healthier versions out there with less sugar, but they are held together with nut butters and because of allergies, I can’t do nut butters. So old fashioned butter and sugar it was. The straight up chocolate chip was probably the kids’ collective favorite, but the chocolate chocolate chunk and the funfetti sugar cookie with white chocolate chips got honorable mentions. Because of nut allergies, I only used vanilla and bumped it up to a full teaspooon per batch. I also subbed cream for the milk, bumped that up to two tablespoons to start. You ‘heat treat’ the flour, meaning you bake it at 350 for 7-10 minutes which is how the dough is edible, but it also dries the flour out and makes it clumpy. I’d recommend sifting it or running a whisk through it before you stir it in the dough. All the doughs needed more liquid, so it’s probably a three tablespoon recipe but we didn’t measure beyond the first addition of liquid, we just kept adding little splashes until the dough looked right.

And that friends, are a few things I think you should know about at the moment. Especially that salad. Go make it.