Now if this isn’t the spring-iest thing that has ever sprung from my kitchen, I don’t know what is.
A few weeks ago we started easing into bright, fresh spring-y greens with some, uh, mac n’ cheese. With peas though!! And it was marvelous and cozy and the perfect season-straddling dish. But now? It’s May, yo! It’s full-on spring up in here. And my cravings are aligning with the spring in the air and the promise of long summer days (and eek, bathing suits?!?!) on the horizon.
What do you make for your mom for Mother’s Day brunch when your mom is the biggest chocoholic of all time?
Answer: Enormous chocolate-chocolate chunk muffins. Obviously.
I inherited many things from my mama: a big head of curly hair, a love of crossword puzzles, and a healthy appreciation for some serious trashy reality TV. But maybe the biggest thing I got from my mama? Her major chocolate sweet tooth. (Well, my dad has a giant sweet tooth too, so I was kinda done for at birth on that one, but work with me here.) My mom takes a love of chocolate to the extreme – she has no interest in any desserts that DON’T have chocolate. If there’s chocolate anything on the menu, she’s going to be all about it. Which I love, because I know exactly how to make her happy for virtual Mother’s Day brunch!
I’m slowly re-learning that the weird thing about living in a place with no real seasons is that my food cravings are ALL OVER THE PLACE.
When I lived in Chicago, I very much craved seasonal dishes – warm roast-y vegetables and apple everything in the fall; hearty soups and chili and creamy pasta in the winter; fresh, green, and satisfyingly light dishes in the spring; tons of fresh fruit and BBQ staples in the summer. Here in California, not only is there basically none of the temperature changes that typically accompany changing seasons, but there is also incredible produce available literally all year around. Here, there’s no OMG factor when you see the strawberries or avocados you’ve been waiting all year for. Not to sound ungrateful – most of the time, it’s AWESOME – but without these typical signals, my body is craving all sorts of random things all the time. And let’s be real – I’m pretty much always craving macaroni and cheese.
Guys, it’s been too long since we REALLY did it up with bacon.
I mean, sure, we’ve had some bacon. We’ve eaten lots of ham. Bacon consumption is surely not down in my life in general. But it’s been way too long since we really went whole hog (pun 100% intended) and made a whole meal dedicated to highlighting our beloved bacon.