A March Top Ten List

TOP TEN THINGS MAKING ME REALLY HAPPY THIS SPRING

1. The Sliced Spring Salad with Avocado and Feta from Molly Wizenberg of Orangette. I can’t get enough of it, having eaten it every day for the past week.

2. Cheerful tulips wherever I look: spilling out of a vase on my living room table, planted in the dividers in the middle of Broadway and on Park Avenue, at every corner deli selling flowers, at the farmer's markets...

3. Big bouquets of radishes, ready to be shaved into a salad or layered on top of baguette slices with avocado.

4. Drinking Sancerre Rosé in the late afternoon at Balthazar. Pure bliss.

5. Bundles of asparagus, thick and thin. They often beg me to top them with a freshly poached farm egg. 

6. Weather that’s warm enough to wear shoes without socks. (You can take the girl out of California but you can’t take the California out of the girl.)

7. This brilliant tree in Riverside Park.

8. Fresh fava beans in their cottony pods.

9. Running in Central Park and enjoying the trees bursting into bloom.

10. The crave-worthy fennel-raisin loaf at Amy’s Bread, baked in the shape of a sunflower. If that doesn’t put a smile on your face, I don’t know what will.

What things are making you happy this spring? I’d love to know.