Eating in spring

We had a houseful of guests for the Easter weekend, a timing coincidence due to spring break. While I love having guests, I'm a little distracted this time of year and can't give guests 100% attention; hopefully they are tolerant.

Having to feed a crowd is tricky, this time of year, especially with non-meat eaters. The freezers are full of meat and we have an abundance of eggs and milk, but there isn't a whole lot of vegetables available. We smoked a turkey, the other one of the two older Narragansett males we got before the racoons did. I managed to salvage a bit of one potimarron squash that wasn't moldy, but this is it; the winter squash are gone. The potatoes are still doing okay, they have tiny sprouts that can be ignored, and there are onions and garlic. Of the overwintered in the ground roots, we ate the last parsnip, a huge beet and some very small carrots. There was small new kale leaves and sun dried tomatoes for a quiche. And there are green beans still in the freezer, and we made dessert from berries we froze last summer.

It was a great meal, but a lot of worry. Usually there's some vegetable we have in abundance but this time of year it's the somewhat bedraggled remains of last year and the scanty new stuff.

I did see some new and beautiful broccoli side shoots out there, on last falls's plants. And there are a few asparagus spears peeking out. Now that most of the guests have left there will be some interesting variety, enough for two if not for ten...