One would be hard-pressed to believe that Spring actually had arrived earlier this week, when the snows of winter seemed to resist the appeal of the new season by depositing yet another deluge of the frozen white stuff on coastal New Jersey, New York, and New England areas - the fourth Nor'easter of the previous fortnight! It was enough.
Fortunately, the "Four'easter," as the media cleverly dubbed it, managed to avoid my area of upstate New York, by about 30 miles, so we were unscathed (phew!) by yet another ocean blast of the white stuff, but there's still a decent amount of snow still on the ground, though gradually fading.
I fully expect the remaining snow to diminish in the next week, and perhaps be completely melted by Easter Sunday, with temperatures finally returning to the normal (40s-50s) range expected in late March. One can only hope for that, but there are plenty of other reasons to go ahead and readily embrace the arrival of the Spring season - particularly in the kitchen.
It has been a long and cold winter, so the prospect of replacing the hearty, warming appeal of winter's heavier "comfort food" (and the pounds they often can add!) to the lighter, fresh fare of the spring season - first of the season salad greens, lemon and asparagus, etc.
I also decided to use the seasonal change in menu to see if I could skip a routine trip to the nearby grocery store and whether I could make several meals out of the contents of my refrigerator and freezer, along with the pantry staples I already had on hand. It was a fairly easy decision to make a light and tasty pasta primavera with some pennette pasta, turkey bacon, sauteed golden onion, frozen peas and chives, and some grated Asiago cheese.
The good news is that I used only a half of the box of pasta, which resulted in enough pasta for several dinners and lunches. I also have a jar of creamy Alfredo sauce for pasta and some shredded cheddar and Italian cheese blend, so I'll add some of those to create a "primavera" variation on baked macaroni and cheese. A little heavier than the basic pasta primavera, but enough to make it interesting and a little different than the original.
And that's just the beginning. I've got some frozen salmon fillets, a bit of frozen shrimp, some frozen left-over vegetable lasagna, some frozen spinach and puff pastry for spanakopita, fresh carrots and plenty of frozen turkey stock and soup base for Florentine chicken soup with pasta and spinach, along with some tasty fish bakes or stews.
Sometimes it just takes a long-awaited change of season to inspire a change in approach to cooking and dining as the weather finally starts to warm and the birds begin to chip and sing!
