I could literally feel the seasonal depression woes leaving my body with every minute past 6pm that it was light out yesterday. Walking on the bike trail without a jacket, cutting back hydrangea & rose bushes and seeing actual buds on the branches, and eating my first cherry dipped vanilla cone of the season might also have helped.

I’m choosing to ignore the 10 day forecast which is apparently just teasing us northeasterners with mid-50 degree temps before plunging back into arcticness later this week and making all things spring in my kitchen.

Including this salad.

I don’t really know if carrots are even a spring thing actually. But in my 10 year old mind they make me think of bunnies and therefore the Easter bunny and that’s how we get to spring with them.

I got blindsided with another cold (that’d be 2 head colds in the span of 13 days in case you’re counting) at the end of last week and it was no joke. By Friday morning I was saying screw you to the elderberry, tea & honey, raw garlic adventures and dragging my sick butt to the urgent care down the road in about 10 inches of unplowed snow. I have a lot to be thankful for in life but Friday morning it was an SUV, antibiotics and reasonable health insurance.

So while the meds kicked in within 24 hours, Ulysses and I once again (for the 3rd out of 4 weeks now) got to spend our 2 days a week together sleeping in separate bedrooms and I was left with a head that felt like it was floating about 15 feet above my actual body unable to smell or taste a thing, which is the sole reason this salad has chili peppers in it. It might be the only good thing that came of this sickness.

Unable to taste pretty much anything unless I blow my nose after each bite (a slightly disgusting proposition while at the dinner table), I decided this salad needed serious spice to help the chances.

And it worked. Those little peppers are no joke. Minced up with ginger and coconut oil they were the perfect dressing addition for my stuffed head.

If you don’t like spice (or don’t have a head cold), proceed with caution. That is all.