Food and Cooking

Need help with meal planning? (Who doesn't?) Since we all can't afford our own personal chefs, there's Relish, a handy meal-planning service for busy parents.

Relish is an easy to use, mom-run website that helps you prepare healthy, creative meals every week. You pick from a wide variety of delicious, thoroughly tested recipes, a cleverly organized grocery list is automatically created, then you is hit the store to collect the ingredients for five days worth of home-cooked meals—all of which take no more than 30 minutes to prepare.

Relish offers much to choose from including vegetarian menus, healthy lunches, seasonal treats, and kids favorites that don't include the word "nugget."

This spring and summer, the Indian Valley Organic Farm and Garden on the grounds of College of Marin's Indian Valley Campus is a great place to get organic fruits and veggies. A project of College of Marin, Conservation Corps North Bay, and the UC Cooperative Extension, this 5.8-acre certified organic education farm and garden is open to the public for produce shopping on Wednesdays and Saturdays from 10 am to 3 pm.

Bring your own bags and browse the farm stand for a wide variety of seasonal produce grown right there on-site. Right now, you can get artichokes, beets, radishes, chard, kale, leeks, and more. They also sell plants like poppies and other flowers, fruit trees, and several kinds of strawberry plants.

The Indian Valley Organic Farm and Garden is located on the Indian Valley Campus at 1800 Ignacio Boulevard. To get there, take Highway 101 to the Ignacio/Bel Marin Keys Boulevard exit and head west on Ignacio Boulevard. Follow Ignacio Boulevard all the way to the end of the road near the campus police station. There's a $3 parking fee during the week. The farm is a short walk from the parking area near the baseball fields.

Marin Mommies presents this week's guest recipe from Nicole Cibellis, Marin mom and author of the blog A Family that Eats Together, where she shares meal plans and recipes that will please foodies and children alike. Nicole is also the creator of the new Little Froglet line of children's activewear. Here's Nicole's meal plan for this week.

Being the bacon fanatic that I am, I have to admit one of my most favorite pasta dishes is carbonara. But I have been so inspired by this warm spring and all the bounty from my garden and the farmer’s markets that I wanted to twist around the traditional carbonara to make it healthier and lighter using asparagus and making it vegetarian. The sauce is raw so I do use raw eggs, but the key to using raw eggs in any recipe is to use the most farm fresh cage free eggs available. Don’t be afraid to use fresh raw eggs. As with any carbonara, the heat of the pasta cooks the eggs as you toss all the ingredients together leaving a silky, smooth sauce that gently coats to the pasta. In no time you will have spectacular meal that screams “Spring is here!”

Servings: 4
Prep time: 10 minutes
Cook time: 20 minutes

Ingredients

• 1 lb spaghetti
• 1 bunch of fresh asparagus, bottoms snapped off and cut into one-inch pieces

My family loves all things lemon, so when a friend gave us a bunch of lemons from her tree, we were all happy. But what to do with all those lemons? We decided to make a lemon-buttermilk Bundt cake, since I just found my old hand-me-down family Bundt pan in a box in the garage and wanted to try it out.

I have to say, the results were fantastic! The fresh lemon flavor really comes through, and the moist cake with a crisp crust and lemony glaze is a real springtime treat. A slice is perfect with a cup of coffee or tea. We'll definitely be making this again.

Ingredients

for the cake

• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature (plus more for greasing pan)
• 3 cups all purpose flour (plus more for flouring the pan)
• 1 tablespoon baking powder