Oven Roasted & Instant Pot Asparagus
Oven Roasted & Instant Pot Asparagus
Two easy recipes to welcome spring, plus my favorite book so far this year and a delicious vegetarian cookbook.
It’s spring!
I cannot believe that we’re still getting April showers here in LA, but I’m enjoying every wet, drizzly minute of it. I’ve been grouching for almost 20 years about the relentlessly glaring sun in Southern CA, so for outliers like myself the overcast winter and spring of 2023 have been glorious.
It’s a perfect day to be sipping from my new Ember coffee mug that my parents gave me as a gift over spring break. It’s a ridiculously expensive coffee cup that keeps coffee piping hot, no cool downs and no need to ruin your coffee in the microwave. I’m feeling spoiled and lucky and happy to be sitting on my couch talking to you!
This week, I decided to share two simple recipes for the springiest of all spring vegetables, asparagus. Even though we can all buy it year round in grocery stores, it’s still the vegetable most associated with spring.
When cold weather suddenly turns warm, asparagus literally shoots out of the ground. It’s one of the first vegetables harvested in the spring, signally that winter is truly over.
I’m sharing two recipes for cooked asparagus. But! You can make a really light and fresh raw asparagus salad by using a vegetable peeler to shave long, thin strands of raw asparagus. A squeeze of lemon, a drizzle of olive oil + salt & pepper finish the salad (maybe some shaved parmesan, too).
Balsamic Glazed Instant Pot Asparagus
You can use a pressure cooker to quickly steam asparagus if you program your Instant Pot to cook for “0” (that’s zero) minutes. Then, simmer a sweet and tangy balsamic glaze to drizzle on top made from balsamic vinegar, brown sugar, soy sauce and butter.
Oven Roasted Asparagus
I love the crispy tips on roasted asparagus, don’t you? You can also grill thick spears of asparagus to get the same result. This recipe walks you through roasting perfect asparagus, every time.
Dinner Last Week
I’m always curious about what other families are eating. Aren’t you? Here’s what my crew ate last week.
Monday: Cheese ravioli, roasted cauliflower, green beans. One of my kids has turned against all forms of pasta, so she had a scrambled egg.
Tuesday: Instant Pot Lentil Soup with Sausage (I put half in the freezer and we’ll be eating it again this week).
Wednesday: We celebrated Passover with a very simple meal: rotisserie chicken, Trader Joe’s frozen latkes, roasted carrots, and ice cream sandwiches for dessert. Sometimes holidays make me feel like I need to cook an amazing meal or not bother at all, so it was good to be reminded that there’s a middle option. Our Passover dinner was simple but really enjoyable. It was perfect for a night when my husband worked late and we were packing to leave town the next day. Added bonus - we turned the leftover chicken into sandwiches for our road trip.
Thursday & Friday: We were in Arizona visiting family for the last part of our spring break. We ate grilled steak and grilled shrimp and grilled chicken…it really felt like summer!
Fiction & Cookbooks
I finished the book everyone was talking about last year, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin and loved everything about the first 3/4 of the book. This is a book I’m aching to talk to someone about, and I’m wondering if anyone else found that the last quarter of the book changed their overall enjoyment of the story?
Even so, I thoroughly enjoyed the uniquely flawed characters, the complicated relationships and the meandering plot. There is so much to love about Gabrielle Zevin’s writing and I’m looking forward to reading her earlier books.
If you’re looking for a good vegetarian cookbook, try Family by Hetty McKinnon. It’s a coffee table sized book with tons of photos that make vegetarian meals look comforting, filling and satisfying. There’s spinach and artichoke chowder in bread bowls, creamy broccoli soup (made with silken tofu, not cream) and miso brown butter pasta, plus dozens and dozens more recipes. I’ve had this cookbook checked out from the library for 3 weeks and I’m still paging through it.
Please note that book titles in this section are Bookshop.org affiliate links. Your cost for purchasing the book is the same, but a small portion of your purchase will come back to me and help support my work. When ordering from Bookshop.org you’ll also be supporting independent bookstores.
That’s it for this week! For the rest of you normal people, I hope the sun is shining and brightening your day!
xo
Jenny
P.S. In March I sent paid subscribers new recipes for Instant Pot Rice & Bean Burritos, Sheet-pan Soy Sauce Chicken and Broccoli and gluten-free Apple Cinnamon Muffins. If you’d like more recipes too, consider becoming a paid subscriber for only $5/month.
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