It’s funny what you find when going through boxes in the time around a move. If you’re a bit of a pack rat, like we are, there will be loads of paper – receipts, ticket stubs, take out menus from old haunts, greeting cards from birthdays long-past, and magazines. Like this issue of Food and Wine from April 2004 (interestingly, the very month I moved to NYC).

I took a break from my culling and purging to take a cursory glance at the contents, and this photo caught my eye, a dish of peas and pearl couscous, lovely little orbs dancing together in a sauce of butter and fresh mint, just the kind of simple summer side I love. I set the magazine aside to recycle, but filed the recipe away in my mind, and when I spotted fresh peas from Simmons Farm at our farmers’ market over the weekend, I knew just how I’d prepare them.

First, the shelling.

(Kirby helped.)

I took my two cups of shelled fresh peas, blanched them briefly and shocked them in an ice bath, then tossed them with my cooked couscous (1 cup dry plus 1 1/4 cups water and a good pinch of sea salt). I diverted from the butter-and-mint sauce in the original dish, instead using about a quarter cup of my lemony basil-pistachio pesto.

The whole thing got a good toss, then I spooned some onto our plates alongside simply seared salmon filets, a perfect early-summer meal in just minutes.

Anita’s Dinner on a deadline post is still percolating in my brain, and it has been interesting to follow the responses her post has received so far. This last week has been a bit of an anomaly for us in the kitchen, with Mike fine-tuning his pizza recipes for food52′s Week 47 challenge, and me working on some cooking and recipe-testing projects of my own, but we’ve still had to get dinner on the table, and when it hasn’t been pizza or one of my works-in-progress, it has most often been something as simple as pasta. And as much as I’ve griped in the past about how I can’t bear to post another darned pasta dish, I’ve decided that I’m really okay with pasta being something we eat as often as we do, whether it makes it to the blog or not.

I am a home cook. I’m not a writer or a culinary professional, I’m just a girl who works long days, comes home exhausted, and looks forward to sharing a meal with her husband. And whether he’s cooking dinner, or I am, or it’s a joint effort, by and large I want what we eat at home to be good, honest, real food, even if it’s just a simple bowl of pasta and vegetables. I have to be okay with that, because ultimately, the point isn’t posting stuff to this blog – it’s about feeding ourselves well. Being able to do that in the time it takes to boil a pot of water and cook some orecchiette is something I shouldn’t take for granted.

I like pretty food.

What can I say, I’m drawn to colors that pop, to produce that is as vibrantly colored as it is tasty. After months and months of cream-beige-brown food (with the occasional deep green or orange thrown into the mix), the reappearance of spring green at the farmers’ market, of tender shoots and tiny leaves, has me feeling hopeful. We’re far from September’s splashy abundance, but in some ways, I prefer this time of year – you choose one or two beautiful ingredients, treat them well, and you’re all but guaranteed a good meal.

Which brings us to these microgreens, a lovely combination of baby leaves and blossoms, spicy, peppery, utterly bewitching. They make a lovely salad with a spritz of champagne vinegar, salt, pepper, and the barest drizzle of your very best olive oil. They also make a beautiful bed for deviled eggs.

I’m a little in love with these willowy chives, too, with their gentle onion flavor and their crisp green hue.

Peas won’t come in around these parts until mid-June or so, but I had some in the freezer from last summer, so I decided to build a stuffed pasta dish. I thawed the peas and pureed them with a little crème fraiche, plenty of chives, some cream cheese and soft fresh goat cheese, then I piped the mixture onto sheets of freshly rolled pasta, folding and pinching and then cutting them into agnolotti. The agnolotti bathed ever-so-briefly in boiling salted water, then I carefully placed them into a pan of melted butter with a healthy hit of lemon juice added, plus a splash of the pasta water to bring it all togther.

I added a couple of handfuls of those beautiful microgreens to the pan off the heat, gently tossing them with the pasta and lemon-butter sauce, then I divided the agnolotti, greens, and sauce between our bowls. A few more fresh chives snipped on, a little lemon zest, a crumble or three of goat cheese, and our pretty plates were ready.

I’m a big fan of soup any time of year, but there’s nothing like a light, brothy bowl of springtime veggies to take the chill off an early May evening. I tossed this together mostly from odds and ends: first, a lone leek which had been lingering in the crisper drawer, then some thinly sliced fennel stalks, both cooked with a sprinkling of salt and a knob of butter until soft. Next I added some cooked flageolet beans and their cooking liquid, plus a few additional cups of water, some sweet young carrots, and a half cup or so of carnaroli rice. While the broth bubbled and the rice plumped, I thawed some leftover cooked asparagus and peas from the freezer, adding them to the pot to just warm through. I tasted the soup for seasoning and added a few finishing touches, in the form of fresh spinach, chopped fresh tarragon, and shards of Pecorino Romano. A little toasted bread on the side (with more of that Pecorino), and we were good to go.

This meal was nothing fancy – honestly, the pasta was primarily a vehicle for another batch of bright and zingy sorrel pesto. I made the sorrel pesto without pine nuts this time, instead tossing a bunch of chopped hazelnuts into the pasta when I tossed it to provide a little crunch.

Also in the mix: thin stalks of fresh, local asparagus, which I chopped into short little bits and tossed, raw, into the hot pasta, some tiny peas from the freezer, and a light dusting of finely grated Divine Providence. This pasta was simple, satisfying, and full of the flavors of springtime.

Here’s another brief catch-up post at the end of a busy week. Wednesday night’s meal was not exactly what I had planned, as I realized yet again that an item I thought I still had was absent from my pantry. So rather than the black rice I had planned to combine with peas from the freezer and Allen Farms pea greens, I used lentils.

I cooked them with shallot and a healthy amount of coriander, and they were tasty but not quite what I was going for. Still, the combination made a nice bed for our sauteed Georges Bank cod filets, and the pea greens were fabulous. Kirby thought so, too.

Thursday’s dinner was another one built on leftovers: the remainder of last weekend’s roast beef from Simmons Farm, cut into chunks, slowly cooked in a bottle of ‘gansett then shredded apart with a couple of forks; plus the rest of my most recent batch of enchilada sauce, thawed and reheated.

I stuffed the meat into softened Piaxtla tortillas and rolled them, nestling them in a baking dish with enchilada sauce on the bottom, then pouring the rest of the sauce over the top, and finally adding slices of Narragansett Creamery mozzarella before chucking them in the oven to bake.

When they came out of the oven, I let them rest briefly before plating them, topping each serving with a bit of crumbled queso fresco (also from Narragansett Creamery), some chile-spiced toasted pepitas, and chunks of avocado, a cooling counterpoint to the spicy chile sauce.

Not the prettiest thing I’ve ever made, and definitely a work in progress, but this wasn’t bad for a quick Monday dinner. I usually like to make my own blend of curry spices, but last night I cheated, toasting a blend of store-bought curry powder and garam masala in butter along with some fresh curry leaves, then adding chunks of eggplant, sweet potato and cauliflower from Wishing Stone Farm, a bit of fresh tomato puree from the freezer, and some water. I brought the mixture to a boil then let it cook uncovered until the sauce had thickened and reduced a bit, then threw in a couple of handfuls of frozen peas right at the end for a pop of color and sweetness. I served it over rice, with a dollop of Narragansett Creamery yogurt on top and purchased garlic naan on the side.

Heavenly carrots from the Copley farmers’ market – I wish I could remember the name of the farm. I’ll be back for more and will make a note of it.

This is totally Amy‘s fault. I know it’s not the most sustainable option, and it’s definitely not local, but this snapper caught my eye at Whole Foods and I couldn’t leave without it. The filets are simply pan-seared and served on top of peas, favas, carrots and shallot, sauteed ever-so-briefly in butter and finished with a little white vermouth and fresh dill.

To go with the fish, a lip-smacker from our most recent mixed case. Yum.

There will come a time when I’m sick of summer squash. But that time is a long way off.

There will never come a time when I’m sick of pasta. This one’s tossed with the aforementioned summer squash, the rest of our first summer tomato, soft goat cheese, lemon juice and zest, and a sprinkling of opal basil. Simple and delicious.

This really is the most exciting time of year to cook, isn’t it?

We love our pasta, but it’s rare that we have it two nights in a row. However, my week turned pretty hectic, and as a result I’ve been feeling tired and uninspired. I still wanted to get a home-cooked meal on the table Wednesday and Thursday nights, and these pasta dinners were just the ticket.

We brought a package of Simmons Farm bacon and a big bag of pea tendrils home from the farmers’ market last weekend, and had some (non-local) fresh peas from Whole Foods, so I decided to combine them for Wednesday night’s meal. I chopped up six slices of the bacon, cooking them until crisp, draining the pieces on a paper towel, and using a tablespoon or so of the fat to sauté a cup or so of chopped shallot. I blanched the shelled peas in my boiling pasta water, and then removed them to an ice bath before dropping half a package of bucatini into the water.

While the pasta cooked, I beat four eggs in a warmed serving bowl and added copious amounts of grated Parmagiano Reggiano, Pecorino Romano, and cracked black pepper. I roughly chopped several handfuls of the pea tendrils and added them and the blanched peas to the pan with the shallots along with some fresh thyme leaves, cooking it all until the peas were warmed through and the pea tendrils slightly wilted. I added the pea mixture and bacon to the beaten eggs, and then added the bucatini a little at a time, tossing gently.

When everything was combined and the sauce slightly thickened, I plated the pasta in shallow bowls, adding additional grated cheese and cracked pepper on top. I used as many eggs as I normally would have for a full package of pasta so this was a bit eggy for my liking, but it was still good, with the sweet peas, smoky bacon and slightly peppery pea tendrils playing well off each other.

While Wednesday night’s pasta was at least spring-like, last night’s pasta dinner was not exactly what I’d have planned for the first of May. Since I didn’t have anything planned, Mike’s request for ragu Bolognese was a welcome suggestion, and it turned out to be just the thing to take the chill off on a damp, cold night. I put together a quick version of my standard sauce when I got home and tossed it with chunky rigatoni, topping each serving with a dollop of Narragansett‘s creamy Renaissance ricotta (one of my favorite ways to finish a serving of meat-sauced pasta since my lunch with Claudia at A Voce). This may not have been the most exciting dinner around, but it hit the spot, and I’m always happy to be able to whip out a meal without too much thought or effort.

We’re meeting good friends for dinner and a movie tonight, which should be just the boost I need. Enjoy your weekend, everyone!

I’ve admitted in the past that I have a secret love for canned soup casseroles, but it has been years since I’ve made one at home because I just don’t cook that way anymore. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I’ve missed them, and from time to time, I think about how I might put one together without adding a can or three of that sodium-laden, over-processed cream-of-whatever to the mix.

Dinners this week have been largely unplanned. All of the energy I would normally have put toward sketching out a meal plan for the week has been directed elsewhere: to making lists, making plans, making arrangements and sorting out the numbers in preparation for our move. And again, there is the matter of clearing the freezer and pantry, paring things down so we can start fresh at our new home.

By the time lunch rolled around yesterday, I was in the unfamiliar (for me) position of still not knowing what I was going to cook for dinner. We are, as you can imagine, trying to be particularly thrifty these days so going out wasn’t really an option, and though I could have had Mike stop and pick up something fresh to cook up, that really goes against the whole culling thing that we’re trying to do. So I thought back to the cupboards, fridge and freezer, and inspiration struck: I had half a brick of cream cheese left over from Wednesday night’s stuffed chicken breasts, a couple of cans of good tuna on the shelves, and the last of the peas I shelled, blanched and froze last summer. The cream cheese, when mixed into a basic béchamel sauce, might just work as the base for a tuna noodle casserole…

It did work, and beautifully, making a thick, creamy and flavorful sauce to bind the cooked pasta, fresh peas, drained and chunked tuna and some mushrooms which I had chopped and sautéed until golden with shallot, sherry and dried marjoram. As with all good canned soup casseroles, this one got a cheesy, crisp topping of grated parm and dried breadcrumbs, which baked to a golden crust. This was the comfort food of my youth elevated to a new (guilt-free) level, and I can’t wait to play with future variations.