The Recipe: My bread recipe, the one I've made again and again for exactly one year. It's an easy bread to make often, to fit into small spaces of your cooking life. The Conversation: How I accidentally came to make European-style bread every few days for the past year. It's a special day here today, March 31st. First, DarkEarly this morning, we were visited by a pair of wild mallards, their bright orange feet announcing their northward migration back to Canada for the summer. Mama was sooo hungry, pecking at the ground below the bird feeders, Papa kept watch. Every so often, she'd lead the way across the pool cover for a drink, then back to the feeders for another course. They're gone now. Safe travels, visitors! But more than that, today is my mother's birthday. Were she still alive, her birthday cake's 87 candles would light up a room! And today it's been one year and two days since my now 91-year old father came to live with ...

A homemade creamy spinach soup that's on the table in 30 minutes flat, a satisfying supper when topped with still-warm and easy-to-peel hard-cooked eggs. Perfect for bridging the seasons, this soup is a great choice for Lent and St. Patrick's Day in the spring and for Meatless Mondays year-round. The recipe works with either fresh or frozen spinach (fresh is my favorite) and with either a refined or rustic look (rustic is my usual choice), making it ever so versatile. Vegetarian. Low Carb. High Protein. And Decidedly Delicious. ~ Skip Straight to the Recipe ~ BEST RECIPES! Spinach Soup Made the List! Best Recipes of 2009 "There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground …" ~ Sara Teasdale, poet March: The Muddy Messy Month Here in the Midwest, March is that muddy messy month between winter and spring, when warm days flirt with our summer-drenched dreams, when spring snows dash our winter-weary hearts. For a cook, there’s no planning ...