Seasonal Sundays (Week 7) Mid February

Hey all, this week is all about recipes for the big week ahead, bookended by today's SuperBowl and next weekend's Valentine's. Plus, here's one breakup that might well lighten your life: Facebook.

~ Skip Straight to the Good Stuff ~

Welcome to Seasonal Sundays ...

Hey, all. Thank you for following Kitchen Parade, for checking in on these Sunday missives. It means the world to be welcomed into your InBox and RSS readers and most of all, your kitchens. So thank you, thank you.

Wishing us all a good week ...

About the Photo By Popular Request, a Little Insight into the Top Image: I once fell in love with a children's book whose storyline featured a quilt with an unusual pair of colors: red and light blue. Unfortunately, I didn't buy the book, even the next day, after systematically looking at each and every book in the children's section at a Borders store. Some so-many years later, I still regret it!

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PICK ONE

Pick One is for those of us overwhelmed by life's unending choices. If that resonates, then check out this one recipe and then call it a day. It's one that I think could make the most difference, the one I hope will become a regular in your kitchen, as it is in mine.

• THE RECIPE My Guacamole Restaurant-style guacamole, our house recipe.

ISO Last-Minute Appetizers?

• THE RECIPE Tuna & White Bean Dip
• ANOTHER TAKE Kalamata Tuna Salad Bok Choy Wraps

• THE RECIPE Easy Shrimp Bites Four pantry ingredients, a snap to assemble.
• ANOTHER TAKE Bacon-Wrapped Dried Apricots Quick to fix, surprisingly low in calories.

• THE RECIPE Herbed Goat Cheese An easy low-carb, make-ahead appetizer.
• ANOTHER TAKE Warm Goat Cheese Appetizer with Mini Tomatoes & Capers Weeknight easy, worthy of an occasion.

Ideas: Date-Night At Home

The Goal: Less Cookin', More Lovin'.

Fast Roast Chicken
My signature recipe, just three ingredients and an hour.
Julia Child's Soubise (Onion & Rice Casserole)
Thin ribbons of onion with rice and a little cream and cheese.
Caesar Salads with
Homemade Caesar Salad Dressing

All Courses Lavender
An Easy Romantic Dinner
Lavender Steaks + Lavender Potatoes
Lavender Crème Brûlée

Seared Scallops with Garlicky Polenta
with Chimichurri (Argentinian Parsley Sauce)
A simple romantic dinner,
perfectly cooked scallops
bedded in creamy polenta
topped with racy spoonsful of chimichurri.

Sweet Endings: Raspberries, Not Chocolate

• THE RECIPE Lemon Pudding Cake Tart lemon + juicy raspberries. Or blueberries!
• ANOTHER TAKE Southern Belle Lemon Layer Cake Easy lemony cake with lemony cream cheese frosting.

• THE RECIPE Raspberry & Red Wine Granita An icy-cold raspberry slushee for grown-ups.
• ANOTHER TAKE Sugar-Free Raspberry Bliss A fruity, creamy raspberry dessert, just three ingredients and quick to make.

• THE RECIPE Raspberry-Red Wine Coulis (Reduction Sauce) Sweet-but-tart raspberry sauce, a perfect added-touch for desserts.
• STELLAR WITH Chocolate Decadence Cake The ultimate chocolate experience.

Digital Housekeeping #3 ... How to Break Up with Facebook

If you love your Facebook connections, scroll on by.

But if Facebook raises your blood pressure, has you thinking about how stupid/unpatriotic/etc your "friends" are, here are some ideas.

QUICK TOOLS for IMMEDIATE IMPACT
• Set up the daily time limits on your phone. It takes discipline to ignore the time limits, because really, notice how 5, 10 and even 15 minutes will fly by. But try it, asking yourself, what am I glad to know now that I didn't know before? It's shocking.
• Sign out of the app afterward, forcing yourself the inconvenience of signing in anew each time you open the app.
• Change your password to include the words "time suck," another reminder.

GIVE FACEBOOK A FACELIFT
• The goal here is to make less time on Facebook more uplifting, more pleasure than pain or obligation, to make that time more focused on connecting with real people vs being the target of companies' sales messages. (And I'm not even talking about the actual paid ads ...)
• Click "see first" for the some-number of friends whose posts you really want to see.
• Unfriend everyone you don't know in real life.
• Unfriend / unfollow your "friends" who don't meet some objective criteria. For example: When was the last time they interacted with you on Facebook? in real life? Do they know your cell phone number? If someone close passed away, would they just insert some sad emoji and move on?
• Snooze or unfollow anyone who raises your blood pressure.
• Unfollow absolutely every Facebook page (usually companies) whose only goal is to sell you something. This takes a surprisingly long while and Facebook doesn't make it easy. A couple of years back, I spent a couple of hours deleting one after another. I thought I'd been quite discriminating about "liking" pages but there were hundreds. Even some years later, another one will pop up. If you look at their page, you'll see they've been posting regularly but for the longest while, the Facebook algorithms haven't shown you a thing. You might well appreciate Target but do you really need to "like" them?

HARD CORE
• Remove the Facebook app from your phone.
• Remove the Facebook app from your phone.
• Remove the Facebook app from your phone.
• Remove the Facebook app from your phone.
• Remove the Facebook app from your phone.

Recipes That Stand the Test of Time

To mark A Veggie Venture's 15th anniversary in 2020, I took a hard look at the first 365 vegetable recipes from the first year to select just 15 which, all these many years and recipes later, remain ever so useful. The result is a fascinating collection of recipes, 15 Favorite Vegetable Recipes, Still Useful After 15 Years. Here's just one.

• THE RECIPE Quick Cauliflower Soup or Quick Broccoli Soup Healthful veggie soups on the table in minutes.
• ANOTHER TAKE Vichyssoise A simple leek & potato soup.

PS Who's noticed? I'm big on "usefulness". See? Best-Ever “Most Useful” Recipes 2002 – Present, just one recipe per year from Kitchen Parade.

Soups & Salads Especially for February

What sparks us in February? Seed catalogs, of course. But for many of us, February is the last real month of winter, almost the last chance for a seasonal cook to revel in cold-weather specialties. So there's soup, of course! And salads, of course! That's why I spent a year gathering all of A Veggie Venture's best soup and salad recipes into easy-to-scan month-by-month collections.

Dig into Seasonal Soup & Salad Recipes for February, tons of ideas!

Here's a sample!

• THE RECIPE Peasant Cabbage Tomato Soup
• ANOTHER TAKE Cabbage & White Bean Stew

Timehop

Who else loves seeing old photos pop up, quick memories from years past? Welcome to a recipe timehop ...

• THE RECIPE Best-Ever Lentil Salad
• ANOTHER TAKE Summer Lentils

• THE RECIPE Creamy Slow Cooker Beans How to cook dried beans from scratch in a slow cooker.
• BUT CHECK FIRST Why Dried Beans Won't Cook Good to Know!
  

What's New?!

• THE RECIPE Buffalo Chicken Dip with Spaghetti Squash
• ANOTHER TAKE Spinach & Artichoke Gratin

• THE RECIPE Crockpot Chili with Spicy Sausage Brown the meat, dump and go.
• MORE IDEAS Chillin': Favorite Chili, Chowder & Cornbread Recipes

Just Updated!

• THE RECIPE Lentil, Pepper & Spinach Supper with Crispy Tofu & Indian Spices
• ANOTHER TAKE Sweet Potato Curry with Red Lentils, Roasted Peppers & Spinach

NUTRITION RESOURCES
• High-Fiber & Low-Fiber Vegetables
• How Many Carbs Are in Vegetables?
• Weight Watchers Points for Vegetables
• Vegetable Nutrition Data

Don't Be a Stranger ...

I'd love to hear from you. Comment, send me a quick e-mail via recipes@kitchen-parade.com, dot-dash in Morse code, build a fire for smoke signals, launch a message in a bottle, send a Christmas letter, get the dog to yip, toss me a note wrapped in a rubberband, write a message in the sky, scratch a note in the sand, listen to a seashell, whatever.

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Kitchen Parade is written by second-generation food columnist Alanna Kellogg and features fresh, seasonal dishes for every-day healthful eating and occasional indulgences. Quick Suppers are Kitchen Parade favorites and feature recipes easy on the budget, the clock, the waistline and the dishwasher. Do you have a favorite recipe that other Kitchen Parade readers might like? Just send me a quick e-mail via recipes@kitchen-parade.com. How to print a Kitchen Parade recipe. Never miss a recipe! If you like this recipe, sign up for a free e-mail subscription. If you like Kitchen Parade, you're sure to like my food blog about vegetable recipes, too, A Veggie Venture. If you make this recipe, I'd love to know your results! Just leave a comment below.

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