Memorial Day honors the men and women who died while serving in the U.S. military.

Originally known as Decoration Day, it originated in the years following the Civil War (1861 to 1865), which saw the largest loss of life of any American war. An estimated 620,000 soldiers died in the conflict—roughly 2% of the U.S. population, in addition to countless civilians.

By the late 1860s, Americans in various communities had begun holding springtime tributes to the fallen soldiers, decorating their graves with flowers and reciting prayers.

In 1966 the federal government declared Waterloo, New York, the official birthplace of Memorial Day. It first celebrated Memorial Day on May 5, 1866, and was selected because it hosted an annual, community-wide event, during which businesses closed and residents decorated the graves of soldiers with flowers and flags.

Memorial Day became an official federal holiday in 1971. Each year on Memorial Day a national moment of silent remembrance takes place at 3:00 p.m., local time. [source]
 
 
MEMORIAL DAY RECIPES

Even if you’re spending a quiet weekend at home, you can celebrate Memorial Day with a patriotic bite or two. Here’s a group of recipes to bite into.

Some are so easy that all you have to do is put the ingredients together: no cooking.

You can use the same red, white and blue recipes for Independence Day and Labor Day, which honors the contributions that American workers have made to the strength, prosperity, laws and well-being of the country.
 
 
MEMORIAL DAY BREAKFAST RECIPES

 
MEMORIAL DAY SIDE & MAIN DISH RECIPES

 
 
MEMORIAL DAY SNACK RECIPES

COULDN’T BE EASIER: [1] Yogurt plus berries. For fun, cut star-shaped toast with cookie cutters (photo courtesy Smuckers). [2] American Flag fruit skewers (photo courtesy [the former] Stix Mediterranean Grill | NYC). [3] Layer white sangria or pink lemonade in a pitcher with berries. You can find the recipe on the Svedka website). [4] Cocktails or mocktails, from Cosmos and Pomtinis to pomegranate juice mocktails (photo courtesy The Clean Dish).

WHO WANTS DESSERT? [5] Add a simple cupcake garnish (photo courtesy Go Bold With Butter). [6] Ice cream with sauces, berries, even a blue macaron serving as the top and bottom of an ice cream sandwich (photo courtesy Vandal | NYC). [7] Just bake the layers, and top with red, white and blue (photo courtesy Good Eggs).

 
 
MEMORIAL DAY DESSERT RECIPES

 
 
MORE MEMORIAL DAY RECIPE IDEAS

We love the convenience of one-pan dinners. This one, from Good Eggs, makes yogurt-marinated chicken with spring veggies.

If you marinate the chicken two hours before (overnight, it takes just 15 minutes to prepare plus 8 minutes to cook. You should make the yogurt sauce at the same time.

Note that with chicken, dairy-based marinades, such buttermilk or yogurt, do the best job of tenderizing. They are only mildly acidic, so don’t toughen meat the way strongly acidic marinades do.

Don’t like turmeric? Substitute cumin or paprika. You can also add onion, lemon juice and ginger.

The chicken gets charred to smoky. You can stuff the chicken and vegetables into pita or serve the pita on the side.
 
 
RECIPE: YOGURT-MARINATED CHICKEN THIGHS WITH SPRING VEGETABLES

Ingredients

Gauge the amounts based on how many servings you’re preparing.

 
For The Yogurt Sauce

 
Serve With

[2] Boneless chicken thighs (photo © Maple Leaf Health and Hospitality).

[3] Ground turmeric (photo © True Food Kitchen).

1. PRE-MARINATE the chicken and make the yogurt sauce: Whisk together the yogurt, mint, oil, lime juice and salt. If too thick, add 1 to 2 tablespoons of water. Use a Microplane to finely grate garlic into the bowl. Stir, taste and adjust salt and lime juice as needed.

2. PREHEAT the broiler. Trim the spring onions and asparagus and slice into 1-inch pieces. Slice the zucchini in quarters lengthwise, then into into 1-inch pieces, so they’re similar in size to the asparagus pieces.

3. LINE a large baking sheet pan with aluminum foil and drizzle with 1 tablespoon olive oil. Spread the oil with the back of a spoon (or your fingers) to coat, and fill the pan with chicken and vegetables in a single layer.

4. DRIZZLE the chicken and vegetables with olive oil. Use your hands to coat the vegetables in olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Broil for 7-8 minutes, until the chicken is a cooked through and a bit charred. While the broiler’s on…

5. WRAP the pitas in foil, and place in the oven on lower rack to heat. Serve the chicken and vegetables in pita with the yogurt sauce; or serve the yogurt on the side as a dipping sauce.

Here’s a video.

[1] White wine with a scattering of lilac blossoms (photo courtesy Tay Tea). [2] Decorate desserts and other foods. Check out these recipes from Brit.co.

We received the top photo from Tay Tea, a lovely tea salon in Delhi, New York, some three hours northwest of New York City. The proprietor spent years as a blender of premium teas, and departed from owning tea salons in New York City to the country.

Fortunately for her fans, she sells her teas online. The blends are beautiful to look at, and you can’t make a wrong choice.

Back to the lilacs:

Lilac blossoms are edible, though they smell better than they taste, so are best used in small amounts as a garnish (only use those that have not been sprayed with pesticides). They typically blossom in April and May.

According to an article on Care2.com, you can “drink in the beauty and aroma” by making a cold-water infusion.

 
MORE WAYS TO CONSUME LILACS
You can also:

 
Check out these nine lilac recipes, from cocktails to desserts.
 
THE MYTH OF THE LILAC

The common lilac (Syringa vulgaris), one of 12 species of lilac, is a member of the Oleaceae family, commonly called the olive family.

The family comprises flowering aromatic woody plants that includes, among others, ash, forsythia, jasmine and privet. Lilac is native to Eurasia.

And it has a legend.

(Note that in real life, lilac twigs are not hollow. They can, however, be easily drilled out.)

Pan’s sighs, combined with the wind and the reeds, made harmonious sounds. Hermes, the fleet-footed messenger and god of boundaries and transitions, suggested that seven reeds of different lengths, bound together, could make what we now call pan pipes, an early flute. The flute was called Syrinx in honor of the nymph.

Did Syringa spend the rest of her life as a lilac bush, to avoid Pan? The record is silent; but we thank her for inspiring the flute and other hollow tubes, such as sryinges for medicine and mechanical uses.