If you adore asparagus, this one is for you! From every local farm stand, asparagus shouts the long awaited news that winter has ended, the ground has warmed, and the earth is ready to give up her glory again! So very fresh with earth's early awakening, spires as snappy as their vivid grassy color are now the verdant stars of every spring menu...it's an exciting time to be in the kitchen!

You would be hard pressed to find a more versatile vegetable. For it's minimal preparation, quick cook time and delicate earthy flavor, asparagus adapts beautifully to almost any cooking application without masking other flavors. Asparagus is a gracious culinary 

You can have your spaetzle and eat it too! For those of us who prefer to keep wheat products very  limited, and yet love an occasional excursion into the gooey-guilty-glutenous world of comfort food, I am happy to report that things are looking very good! Spaetzle, or "nókedli" in Hungarian, was as common on our plate as pasta is to an Italian. Anyu, "mom" in Hungarian, would whip up a batch regularly to sop up all the drippy sauciness of her amazing chicken or pork pörkölt (meat stew). And always, there was the snappy accompaniment

No doubt you've figured out that I am into colorful food. I am not a nutritionist, but somehow, it has always seemed logical that the more saturated the color, the more saturated the nutritional value, and that's a good thing! For that reason, beets, broccoli, dark leafy greens, berries, sweet potatoes, red cabbage and every other richly pigmented produce will regularly find their flamboyant way on to my plate. Eat the rainbow, so they say. And happily, I do just that!

Red cabbage is one of the best super food bargains, for it's incredible nutritional value and it's cost effectiveness. And furthermore, eating cruciferous vegetables in their raw state is enormously more beneficial than eating them cooked! Did you know that the nutrient rich compounds in cruciferous vegetables come to life when  chopped or chewed!