Menus, April 22, 2014

“April hath put a spirit of youth in everything.” 

William Shakespeare

Perhaps you thought that because we didn't eat our way around Easter last week that I'd forgotten all about it.
 Not a chance! Sweet memories pack this holiday like eggs fill an Easter basket. It's of deep significance historically, culturally, religiously, there's chocolate every where, excuses galore to buy cute things for the people you love,  and it's second only to Christmas

in its creepitude capacity.
(creepitude capacity is a real thing. It's the
ratio of time exposed to a spooky stimulus to
the duration and number of nightmares afterward.
I am not making this up.)

 Though individual traditions range from the quirky to the staid, Easter is the biggest holiday til the holidays, and I've always appreciated the fact that it falls, in the Northern Hemisphere (where most of the holidays significant to my own culture-of-origin originated) during Spring.  Passover, Easter, Persian New Year, May day- this week I learned that just as people all over the world celebrate harvest and midwinter, the whole globe, in one way or another, celebrates Spring. 
It's just that spring is a whole lot more fun. 
Because in many of the festivals of Spring, grown ups get to do what young people do, and young people get to do what young people do,

and nobody gets in trouble for it.

Case in point, the celebration pictured above- the amazing two day public water fight otherwise known as the Thai festival of Songkran, when the streets and everyone in them are awash with the cleansing waters of a fresh new year.  In India, Holi also celebrates the return of life and color to the world in a way that gets everyone covered.

Just not in water.

This week we'll be eating our way around this beautiful planet again, and in honor of Earth Day, we'll hanging around the bottom of the food chain, eating a whole lot of the good stuff that springs from the ground. 

Let's start in Bosnia! 

Wednesday: Scrambled Eggs, tomatoes and bacon

Eggs are a nearly universal symbol of  the life stored up and let loose in Spring, and you may have the spilled Easter egg stains on your floor to prove it. Boiled and colored eggs here, but in Bosnia, 1,500 eggs get cracking to celebrate the first day of spring. A whole town gathering by the edge of a river for a scrambled egg breakfast on the first day of Spring. 

We can't do that, but we can still have breakfast for dinner and wish for a river. We'll thrown in some nutrient rich tomatoes and probably a nice slice or two of bacon as well



Thursday: Navratan Korma

It's Holi, the Hindu festival of colors that is celebrated in India this time of year- friends, family and strangers alike pelting each other with handfuls of powdered colors. These super fun festivals are catching on in the U.S., and you might be able to find one near you.  If you can't, you can still have a nice curry for dinner, and Korma is one of the traditional varieties of the festival.  This recipe is for the real deal, and it's long and complicated and full of love. A jar of korma sauce can be full of love too, and I'll probably use that. And premixed garam masala.   Because it's Spring, and I'd rather be outside than in the kitchen, wouldn't you?







Friday: Pan fried white fish and Papaya salad

Along with eggs and vegetables, many Spring celebrations feature fish as a symbol of life and abundance. In a crazy cultural mash-up, we're going to try the sort of fried fish that sees in the Persian New Year together with a Thai salad. There is no deep symbolic meaning to the mash-up; the fish, with its hour long soak in an egg marinade really interests me, and the salad was enthusiastically recommended by a new friend who grew up loving the food of her Taiwanese mother. You'll notice in the fish recipe a step-by-step-by 19 more steps recipe for Persian rice with herbs. We love rice, and all things (well, most things) green, so I may try it. But probably not.


Saturday: Cob Salad 

Back to my beloved homeland, and the dozen or so leftover hard boiled eggs that most of us have loitering about in our refrigerators. We'll be slicing a few onto a simple Cobb salad, but if you've got baskets of em, Real Simple has a few more ideas on how to use them before they smell up the house. The recipe I've linked is a vegetarian version of this classic salad, but a slice of leftover Easter Ham or a grilled chicken breast would be great.



Sunday: Pad See Ew

I have confirmation from a reliable source (other than the always reliable, never nonfactual internet) that Songkran really is a thing. Thailand is one among many cultures that begins the year in Spring, and it really is true that for 2 days, the celebration of the New Year creates one big happy gigantic water fight. Water festivals are showing up in cities all over America, but we might have to settle for a homemade version of one of my all time Thai favorites. 

It's a funny thing that cooking through celebrations, even celebrations that are foreign to me, feels like a week long dinner party. 

And not the boring kind.

And whether or not you find a festival,
I hope your week refreshes you
like a water fight on a hot day.
I hope that as this old earth
grows young again
it drenches you in life and color.
and I hope you're able to catch that joy
throw it up into the air
and love whoever it lands on.
Even (especially) if some of it
lands again

on you.