I always link brunches with spring and its warmer mornings, longer and more leisurely days, and friends with whom you need to catch up after a long winter of occasional hibernation. If you'd like to host more brunches this spring but are nervous about the time or work required, I have a tried-and-true way you can be assured to do it: just plan your brunch around simple, albeit delicious low-key food!

Whether you choose the toppings or let your guests join in on the fun, pizzas and flatbreads are great crowd pleasers. I'm especially fond of socca, a chewy, crispy, gluten-free flatbread made from chickpea flour. As an appetizer or main course socca can be served plain or topped, like this one for spring. It features an herby, lemony pesto and fresh salad — plus it should even satisfy the worst dinner guest ever! 

Much like training for a 10k, planning a dinner party looks manageable from afar. Decide on the menu the week before, clean on Tuesday, buy groceries on Wednesday, and so on until Friday night rolls around and the party has practically come together on its own. However, just like that first long training run that leaves you huffing and puffing, wondering if you'll ever see the race start, let alone the finish line, more than once I've found myself an hour into the menu planning, surrounded by cookbooks and blogs, having underestimated the feat ahead. This is why I turn to braised beef. 

One-dish dinners are so called because one big scoop contains everything you could want or need to fill your belly. Everything from the veg to the meat gets layered into the same skillet, pot, or casserole dish, and cooked together. Sometimes they're ready in a matter of minutes and sometimes they bubble away for hours. Either way, these are big dishes that will easily feed a crowd — all without a pile of pots and pans to clean up afterward.

For me -- and for many Southerners, I presume -- Easter is the first real mark of spring. We dress our houses and tables (and even ourselves) to impress, pulling out all the stops from the freshest flowers to the fanciest flatware. We join together to celebrate a time of joy, renewal, and life. And then we eat! Here's a look back at my own Easter weekend celebration, with a recipe for a classic Southern ham, warm and glossy with a mustard glaze.

They come from many sources: cookbooks, food magazines, blogs. You see them linked to from Facebook, and perhaps your mother in-law tells you all about her latest and greatest. That's right: I'm talking about new recipes. I clip mine from magazines, with the collection spilling from manilla folders. I also organize and categorize online links so I have the perfect polenta recipe for when the mood strikes. But out of all the recipes I amass, what's the driving force to actually select one in particular and tackle it? More

Remember when everyone could eat bread? With more and more people avoiding gluten, bread has become a guilty pleasure at the dinner table, even for those of us who can tolerate it just fine. My deepest sympathies to those with gluten intolerance, who may want to look away while I take a moment to appreciate warm, soft, chewy, crusty, wonderful bread and all the ways you can turn a day-old loaf of it into a full meal.

You may be thinking that a recipe for a thick, hearty soup is a bit odd considering that yesterday was the first day of spring. But this Spanish bean soup is not just any soup. Rather, it is a soup sent straight from the soup gods (if the soup gods took the form of my future mother-in-law).

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Millet is an ancient seed, originally hailing from Africa and northern China, and it remains a staple in the diets of about a third of the world's population. Rich in iron, B vitamins and calcium, millet has a mild corn flavor and is naturally gluten-free. Sure, on first glance you might be tempted to think that raw millet looks like birdseed. But these little yellow beads have a really lovely and light texture when cooked, are relatively quick-cooking because of their small size, and are incredibly versatile in dishes ranging all the way from breakfast to dinner. More

This week in Gatherings from The Kitchn, we're sharing the details of an Italian Polenta Supper featuring lots of toppings, like hearty braised beef, on a bed of creamy cornmeal polenta. For a lighter, vegan-friendly accompaniment to polenta, let me suggest this spring vegetable ragout. Like the braised beef, it's rustic and uncomplicated yet completely dinner-party worthy. Make it now if you're already basking in the glow of peas and asparagus, or save this recipe so you can celebrate the moment spring arrives. More