happy long weekend!

I had a lot of people wishing me a good long weekend today. Which is nice because I can't claim to celebrate Easter in the true fashion this holiday was first observed. My version of Easter is a agnostic, pastel decorating, egg hunting, spring flavour celebration. This year I have three memorable recipes which I made in the past week to celebrate Spring/Easter.

This is Spring-Vegetable Couscous with Chicken. We had a half of a left over rotisserie chicken which worked perfectly into this dinner making the prep quick. There are very few ingredients needed with asparagus and peas as the vegetables. I was afraid it would be bland but with that final hit of parsley salt and pepper at the end you need nothing more. Great warm, perfect cold too.

The second recipe we had this week was Linguine with Asparagus and Eggs. I was working on artwork for Cora's Breakfast & Lunch when this image brought to mind this dinner from the most recent issue of Everyday Food.

 Linguine with asparagus and eggs really is a sort of eggs benedict flavour inspired dinner.  

I love making poached eggs because there is a lot of leeway to obtain a soft boiled center - which is what you want. The liquid yolk helps to create a creamy sauce (not that butter and parmesan need much help). This dinner is quick, easy and tastes so perfect this time of year, we absolutely love it!

Finally, I couldn't let an Easter go by without making Carrot Muffins. I'm still not sure what the difference between a muffin and cake is. I just assume when the recipe calls for oil and includes fruit I consider it as a possible muffin (i.e. - allowed for breakfast!).

This is Anna Olson's recipe from earlier this year and was published on her recipe testing site. It is different than her Carrot Cake recipe I made last year (which was published in the Bulk Barn flyer).

I'm glad that I made these as muffins because they were quite moist but not the most tender. I'm not sure if the density is from all the carrots or 3 eggs. I made my muffins with golden raisins and I'm glad I did because they weren't terribly sweet. I think it's expected that you'd ice them to account for that, but I can always do without icing. That's not to deter you from trying it, I'm just not sure it's an improvement from her previous carrot cake recipe.