Easy!

Cream Biscuits

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As a recent transplant to the South, I have some culinary confessions:

I’ve never eaten grits.

I don’t care for sweet tea. Not to be confused with sweetened tea, I’ve learned.

To be honest I don’t care for sweetened tea, either.

But I do love biscuits.

Biscuits are sort of a huge deal here. There are entire restaurant chains dedicated to the biscuit, whole shelves of biscuit flour at grocery stores. Breakfast biscuits, dinner  biscuits, biscuit sandwiches and biscuits slathered in butter. There’s one drive-thru biscuit place a few miles down the road where cars line up for blocks to get breakfast on Saturday mornings.

This particular recipe is really, and I mean really easy. I found it one morning when I woke up craving biscuits but not craving salad for the rest of the day. To be sure, they’re not sticks of celery, but they’re also not sticks of butter. This is a win in my book. I had never heard of “cream biscuits” but am sure glad I did. Wow.

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Guacamole

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I find the phrase “holy guacamole” somewhat misleading. Holy things are revered. They are viewed from afar. They are stored in stone cathedrals and world museums.

They are never scooped onto chips, dolloped onto quesadillas, or spooned directly out of the bowl.

By these guidelines, this is decidedly unholy guacamole.

Cinco de Mayo was as good of an excuse as any to buy avocados and make my favorite electric-green dip. I generally try to limit my produce purchases to those grown locally, but the convergence of both a holiday AND a dinner invitation were enough to merit an exception.

The cilantro on the porch, however, was ready to harvest! After researching HOW to harvest cilantro without killing the plant and preventing future growth, I went to the balcony armed with scissors and a bowl and voila! Really fresh cilantro!

Guacamole is one of those things that can be prepared “perfectly” in a million different ways. Some guacs are smooth and creamy, some are chunky and spicy, some have tomatoes, some don’t. Personally, I’m in the no tomato camp. If I want tomatoes, I’ll eat salsa from the other dip bowl, thank you very much.

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Crunchy Bok Choy Salad

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Mmmmm spring. The time when my cravings for cool, green salads kicks into full gear. Lucky for me, the tables at the farmer’s market are bowing under the weight of every kind of lettuce, cabbage, chard, and shoot I could possibly want. In fact, here, we are lucky to have two major growing seasons for leafy greens, as well as a fair amount all winter. It’s fabulous.

Bok choy is actually a pretty new leafy green for me, introduced to me in this recipe from Brad’s mother on their visit last fall. For some reason, I’ve made it with lasagne both times we’ve had it. It makes a great side for pasta.

Sidebar: if you don’t already know who Brad is, I should probably bring you in the loop since he’ll probably be mentioned a lot here. I really hate the word “boyfriend” (for some reason I always think of giggling tweens when I say it) but it’s a challenge to find an accurate word for what he is to me. Domestic partner? Significant other? Un-wed spouse? Romantic roommate? Best best friend? Anyway, you get the point.

I digress. The bok choy.

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