These Salted Caramel Covered Strawberries only take about 15 minutes to make and I bet 15 seconds to eat. Oh and I cheated.

Instead of making my own caramel, I got a little help from a yellow bag and a microwave.

Oh how I love modern convenience, especially when it comes to candy coated strawberries!

If you want to be real fancy, I suppose you could make your own salted caramel. But me? I’m just fine with these little nuggets. Melt them in the microwave with some sea salt.

One of the tricks to this recipe is to soak the strawberries briefly in ice water to perk up the green stem and improves the succulent texture of the strawberries.

Melt the caramel in the microwave, swirl the strawberry to coat, then into your choice of chopped nuts (quick, someone make them with pistachios!!).

I love messy caramel.

This recipe came from a brand-new cookbook called Southern Living Farmer Market Cookbook, and I’ve try for the recipe so far, all a big hit. Lots of photos and recipes featuring the goods you’d find at your local farmers market.

I’m not normally a think-ahead type of gal. It’s hard for me to cook a Easter feast 2 weeks before the holiday. But I understand how recipe searching goes – people want to browse recipes BEFORE the holiday to get ideas on what to cook ON the holiday!

I’ve been in the kitchen, pretending it’s Easter and cookin’ up some fantastic ham recipes. The first recipe that I want to share is a Easter ham dinner for 2 people. My in-laws are always asking for recipes scaled down for two, so this is a perfect one for them.

Instead of buying a big gigantic ham – which for 2 people would last them probably 3 years – buy individual ham steaks. I like to give the ham steaks a good sear on both sides and then top it off with a fruity, rum-my glaze.

And because so many of you asked in the comments, the side dish that I have is zucchini and carrot strands. Oh my goodness, I can’t wait to do this, but we’re going to whip back in time and I’m in a link back to a vintage Steamy Kitchen post for that recipe.

This is from a time long, long ago, before I even knew how to use a camera. There, I giving you ample warning.

The zucchini spaghetti looks alien.

Photo from The Steamy Kitchen Cookbook

My blog would not be complete without mention of one of my kids’ favorite dessert in the whole wide world, Chocolate Wontons. In fact, the site serves as my family’s visual menu of sorts, my kids will click through the site and point at dishes they want to have for dinner. Which is why you don’t see any photos of McDonald’s, Burger King or Bob Evans, the chain restaurant that serves the world’s best gummable food — hey, I live in Florida where 45% of the population is old, retired or have no teeth.

But, I digress. Where was I? Oh yes, chocolate.

You can get all fancy and put your favorite, most expensive dark chocolate truffle in the middle of these wontons. The combo of the sweet sprinkle the powder sugar, crackly crisp fried wonton skin and the warm, melty, oozing chocolate will send you straight to blissdom.

Or, go ghetto like us and just stick a piece of Hershey’s Kiss in there and call it “The Bestest Dessert In the Whole Wide World” according to my kids.

The recipe is flexible, if you really can call a recipe. I’ve adapted this fried wonton dessert for Thanksgiving with Sweet Pumpkin Fried Wontons and even made them with strawberry preserves topped with whipped cream for Mother’s Day. The lovely members of The Daring Kitchen even made them!

Want to know how to make Chocolate Wontons? Watch the short video!

If you know me,  and I hope by now you do, I’m never one to even waste precious chewing energy on a boring salad. I have friends who will enjoy even the most plain salad consisting of one variety of lettuce and a glop of salad dressing from a gallon sized vessel bought at a warehouse store, meant for school cafeteria use.

But this BLT salad, with joyful bacon confetti, is one that I could probably eat several times a week. If you don’t make the homemade  buttermilk dressing yourself, there are only really five ingredients:  lettuce, bacon, tomatoes, bread and dressing.

Oh, and another great thing (as if you needed another) – the bacon and the croutons bake together in harmony on the same baking sheet.

Secretly, I could have gone even without a dressing — a secret drizzle of bacon drippings all over the salad and a  a squeeze of lemon would have been just fine. But the homemade buttermilk dressing, which came together in less than 15 seconds, really made this salad over the top.

This is a dish for my bachelor brother, Jay, who lives alone and has those awful working hours only doctors on-call could endure. Sure, it looks glam on Grey’s Anatomy, but I honestly don’t think he’s romping in the supply closet. Or at least I don’t want to think that.

Simple, flexible recipes with little clean-up are the type of recipes that I think Jay would appreciate and this one is from Cooking Know How cookbook by Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough (they have a blog called Real Food Has Curves). Baking fish in parchment paper packets is so incredibly easy, almost foolproof for cooking novices.

Clean up is as quick as crumpling the paper and tossing it away.

Co-author Mark must have had burning ears, because as I was typing this column out, he had sent me an email gushing about their new book that’s hitting the shelves in a few days, “Ham: An Obsession with the Hindquarter,” which they describe as “a hymn to backsides.” I’ll be sure to test a recipe and share with you all as soon as I get a copy in my hands.

How to bake fish in parchment paper (video)