This week spring has arrived in our region! We have an additional hour of daylight as well, so there is more time after work to enjoy the outdoors. Spring always feels like a new beginning….trees and plants are starting to bud, people are talking about turning over the soil in their garden beds, and you see people outside enjoying walks and riding bikes. The smell of charcoal and cooking outdoors is also a welcome part of spring.

Spring also feels like a new chance to do things differently, or to try things again. A new growing season, another chance to eat locally as much as possible (our CSA application for the summer is due at the end of this month), and another try at the home garden. We built our raised beds last year but didn’t have the time or money to do the rest of the steps to start our garden. We have time and money budgeted this year, so I am excited to give it whirl.

Spring feels like hope. It feels positive. Spring always has the “goodest vibes” (as my friend Mike likes to say). It feels better than the calendar New Year’s Day. And yesterday just made me realize how much I’ve looked forward to spring and the new beginning it heralds.

My 76-yr mom is recovering from knee replacement surgery. She came home last week after her hospital stay, and then 2 weeks in a rapid recovery rehabilitation facility. She is scheduled for outpatient physical therapy 4 times per week as she continues to work on getting her knee to bend and walking without a walker. She chose outpatient PT over in-home PT because she and my dad and her doctor felt it would be best because it would make her get up and out of the house and be more mobile. We had a cookout yesterday to celebrate her being home.

I’ve always felt that my family eats pretty healthy due to my mom. She always cooked for us growing up and she always made her own potato salad and/or macaroni salad for cookouts. We rarely bought sides from the store. I had my nutrition class watch a segment of the HBO documentary “The Weight of the Nation” and a visual that has stayed with me was one of a cookout or dinner at the beginning the episode….there was fried chicken, white bread, several salads heavy with mayonnaise, greens drowned in butter, anything that had fruit was covered with a cool whip & cream cheese mixture. I always have mixed feelings when I see things like that. I feel empathy because I know people are socialized to eat those foods for celebration or for comfort (I see foods like that after a funeral). I feel a little sad because people want to be healthy and it makes it hard when families/communities default to food like that in times of celebration or sorrow. And I feel fortunate because my family has the motivation and means to do things differently.

The menu for our cookout was burgers and hotdogs (of course), but the burgers were 95% lean ground beef and the hotdogs were all-beef franks. We had whole wheat hamburger and the closest thing to whole wheat hotdog buns that I could find at the store (enriched wheat flour does not a whole grain make). I looked at the table before we started eating and it made me feel good. In addition to the meat my husband cooked on the grill, I saw a bowl of homemade potato salad that my sister made, baked beans, fresh watermelon and strawberries, and plates of cucumber slices, baby carrots and lettuce. There was some debate about whether to get a pie or potato chips, but my sister gave up potato chips for Lent and we decided we had enough without a pie. We gave in slightly and got a bag of organic tortilla chips. It was the nicest feeling to be sitting at my parents table, with the windows and door open, in warm weather with a table of fresh food. We all got full off of some good and healthy food. And the fact that we were celebrating my mom being home made it that much better.

Hopefully spring signals a new beginning for this blog as well. Lol. I am going to make an effort to blog once per week at a minimum, instead of my sporadic monthly installments. I hope the weather is warm where you are and that you enjoy the beginning of the new season.