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.

I'm a sucker for an unfussy cake, the kind of cake that you can whip up in an hour or less without any extra trips to the grocery store, one that is special enough to serve to guests, but homey enough to not need a special occasion at all. This fragrant lemon cake — scattered with juicy blueberries and dolloped with soft lemon cream — is the perfect unfussy cake, just the thing to bring to a last-minute spring dinner party or to snack on with afternoon tea.

Spring is definitely in the air, and it's right about now that the idea of entertaining starts to have appeal again. After all, we need to remind each other what we look like without scarves covering our faces. The first get-together of spring needs a special dessert to mark the occasion, don't you think? A fluffy cake or a parfait with billowy whipped cream, something with crunchy nuts and topped with a drizzle of honey. Here are 15 recipes that we think will do the job admirably.

Q: I've started planning Easter dinner for my family. We have 6 adults, two of them vegan. My plan is to do lamb chops for the carnivores and go vegan for the side dishes. My other challenge is that I'm on-call Sunday morning so I need things that can be prepared a head of time. 

Here in Southern California, winter is on its way out and I have never felt more ready to give kale salads a rest. Right now I am craving all that is crunchy, fresh and pale green -- like this salad, which mixes a dill-flecked dressing with sweet sugar snap peas, crisp celery, chopped romaine and pretty, pink-edged radish slices that remind me of spring's first blossoms winking to life.

I don't much go for the trappings of Valentine's Day, but I do appreciate the excuse to cook something brilliantly, undeniably pink. Most often that means playing with beets, and this year I'm roasting them up to make a velvety, magenta-colored soup. More

I must confess that weeknight dinners can be a major struggle in my house, which probably seems contradictory coming from someone who writes about food! It's true that my refrigerator is often filled with an eclectic group of ingredients—most of which cannot be transformed into any sort of suitable meal. I often find myself scavenging the pantry for anything I can pass off as adequate, and trust me when I tell you that a starving girl + Nutella does not equal dinner.
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I attribute my early-in-life distaste for asparagus to my grandmother's habitual over-cooking of all things green, but now I love to eat it raw and flash-cooked. And now is the time.

Last week I wrote about rhubarb bursting forth from the garden. Next in line in spring's parade of gifts is asparagus. When it comes, it really comes. Bundles of it give a new fresh texture to the market, their tight little cone heads poking up into the sun.

Since we're talking about grilling this week on The Kitchn, I wanted to share a recipe from my last book, Good Food to Share. It's a lightning-fast way to cook asparagus with fire, bringing out the best of this spring vegetable. More

Aprihop might be Dogfish Head's spring seasonal, but I think this apricot-infused IPA is perfect for right now — just as the the temperature creeps up and the first apricots of summer are appearing at farmers markets. So snatch up a few bottles of Aprihop while they're still around and salute both the season that's ending and the one that's beginning. More

I love having a dessert recipe in my backpocket that's simpler to make than it looks. These are the ones you break out for get-togethers, the ones that people think you spent all afternoon on and you really spent no more than 15 minutes of active time. This is one such dessert. More