Your Best Spring Vegetable Recipe

Nice colors, right? Sherry vinegar, honey, asparagus, mint, hazelnuts, parmesan, and lemon.

Prep is easy: chop your mint.

Merrill trimming the ends from the asparagus.

Make your dressing: honey, lemon juice, sherry vinegar, and olive oil.

Jennifer shows us how she shaves asparagus. Great method ...

Holding down the sliced part makes it easier.

A mess of shavings!

Our salad dressing whisker.

Chopping the toasted hazelnuts. We rubbed off their skins using a paper towel.

Parmesan shavings, ready to meet some asparagus shavings.

We thought this was so pretty before mixing we had to take a shot.

Easily distracted.

Gold star for prettiness.

And flair. That's parmesan's version of a wink.

Bacon, dandelion greens, maple, leek, egg, red wine vinegar.

An infiltrator!

Nevermind, it's just the littlest food stylist.

Six fat slices of bacon is a promising start to any recipe. Don't worry if they're scrunched in, sardine-style -- you'll see how much they shrink up in the next slide.

Bacon beauty shot!

A wild heap of bitter greens.

Merrill happily swishes any dirt off the greens in a big bowl of cool water.

All cleaned up and -- almost -- ready for their close-up. (We used the old chop-and-rinse-furiously trick on those leeks in the colander.)

After the greens were spun dry, we tore them into more manageable bites.

Sometimes, Amanda likes to pretend she's tall.

Leeks softened in bacon fat are about to be joined by red wine vinegar.

And olive oil.

And maple syrup.

Aargersi is right on when she admits that some bacon gets swiped in the cooking process. We're already down a slice.

Sometimes, you can be the picture of elegance in the kitchen (please see Amanda). And sometimes, you splash bacon grease on your nice shirt. We've all been there.

Remembering a cool egg-poaching video from Bon Appetit recently featured in Feed52, the whole crew gathers round for a refresher course.

Breaking each egg into its own bowl helps you not lose control as you slide the egg into simmering water.

Easing the egg into a spoon in the water helps contain and shape it (and it doesn't stick!).

You can use a second spoon to nudge any escaping tendrils of egg white back into place on the spoon.

Now that's how you poach an egg! Ready to be dispatched by fork and knife.