Bunches of fresh mint and piles of sugar snap peas are still weeks away from showing up at my local farmers market, but April’s lengthening days and warming temperatures already have me craving that classic spring pairing. Luckily, they can also be foraged right now at the supermarket down the street.

Usually, I toss my mint and sugar snaps into a big, ebullient salad, but I was more in the mood for something substantial that could be rounded out with a protein. So, I also picked up a package of ground turkey to turn everything into a satisfying and colorful skillet dinner.

Ground turkey is ideal for all manner of impromptu cooking. Not only is it economical and convenient, it’s also mild and adaptable, a chameleon-like ingredient that blends in wherever you use it. It can anchor almost any skillet meal when you sear it until golden and crisp, especially if you throw in enough vegetables and vivid seasonings to bring out its best.

Still, I wanted a pungent sauce to spark the sweetness of the peas and the easygoing turkey, blazing them out of their quiet complacency. For that, I borrowed some of the zesty, spicy flavors of larb.

Popular in Thailand and Laos, larb is at once crunchy and soft, fiery and cooling. It’s a dish of thrilling contrasts that shift from bite to bite — just the thing to perk up a turkey and snap pea meal.

As the turkey sputtered and crisped in the pan, I mixed together a simple larb-inspired sauce of lime juice, fish sauce and chile flakes, which I drizzled onto the meat once it was browned. Then I added the sugar snaps and covered the pan so they could steam in those savory juices.

Not wanting to add a step to my dinner, I skipped toasting and grinding rice into a powder (which is typical of most larb recipes), and finished the dish instead with some chopped roasted nuts to add richness and crunch. Then I folded in the mint.

In Thailand and Laos, larb is considered a hot-weather dish. But mint and sugar snap peas make this larb-inspired meal perfect for the chilly spring nights that herald their arrival.

Spicy Skillet Ground Turkey and Snap Peas

By Melissa Clark

Inspired by the bold and zesty flavors of a Thai larb, this easy skillet meal pairs nuggets of golden ground turkey with sugar snap peas and a mound of fresh herbs. The sauce, a combination of fish sauce, lime juice and red-pepper flakes, makes everything taste both bright and deep, while an optional sprinkling of chopped nuts adds richness and crunch. Serve over rice or rice noodles, or with flatbread.

Yield: 4 servings

Total time: 35 minutes

INGREDIENTS

3 tablespoons olive oil
1 red onion, halved and thinly sliced into half-moons
1 pound ground turkey
Salt, as needed
1/4 cup fresh lime juice (from 2 to 3 limes), more to taste
2 tablespoons fish sauce (or coconut aminos or soy sauce), more to taste
1/2 teaspoon red-pepper flakes
1/2 cup torn mint leaves, more for topping
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro or basil, more for topping
3 scallions, thinly sliced, dark green parts saved for topping
1 pound sugar snap peas, trimmed
2 tablespoons chopped roasted cashews or peanuts (optional)

DIRECTIONS

Heat a large skillet over medium-high. Add the oil and red onion slices to the skillet and cook until soft and deeply brown, 7 to 10 minutes. Crumble in the ground turkey and a pinch of salt, breaking up the meat. Cook until crisp and dark brown, about 8 minutes.
While the turkey is cooking, whisk together the lime juice, fish sauce, red-pepper flakes, torn mint leaves, cilantro and scallion whites and light green parts. Pour the sauce into the skillet and add the sugar snap peas. Toss until combined. Cover and let the snap peas steam until tender and cooked through, about 3 to 5 minutes.
Taste and add more fish sauce, salt and lime juice as needed to make everything bright and savory. Stir in the chopped cashews or peanuts, if using. Top with more torn mint leaves, chopped cilantro and dark green scallion slices.

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It’s been a rough season for the Minnesota Wild, full of injuries to key players, big victories despite those injuries, and inexplicable losses that ultimately kept the team from making its fourth straight postseason tournament.

In the end, they were undone early by a 5-10-4 start from which they could never recover, but you can’t say they didn’t go down fighting. They’ve been playing winning hockey ever since, and were still a longshot to make the postseason.

That officially died on Tuesday in Denver, where the Wild rallied from an early two-goal deficit against playoff-bound Colorado before absorbing a 5-2 loss at Ball Arena that officially eliminated them from the playoffs with four regular-season games remaining.

Battling Tampa Bay’s Nikita Kucherov for the NHL points lead, Avalanche forward Nathan MacKinnon had a hat trick and assist as Colorado took a 5-2 second period lead and never looked back.

“Obviously, tonight’s tough,” Wild veteran blue liner Zach Bogosian told reporters who traveled to Denver for the game. “They’re a good team, and a player like MacKinnon — he can take over a game, and he showed tonight why he’s a world-class player.”

Kirill Kaprizov scored his 42nd goal of the season, and Matt Boldy scored his 27th to tie the game 2-2 after one period, but the Wild couldn’t stop the NHL’s best offense, which entered the game averaging a league-best 3.71 goals a game, or their best player.

MacKinnon beat Filip Gustavsson on three breakaways and had the first assist when Artturi Lehkonen opened the scoring with a power-play goal 4:34 into the game to give him 51 goals and 137 points this season. That’s two points behind Kucherov, who had three assists in Tampa Bay’s 5-2 victory over visiting Columbus to give him 139.

The Wild have four regular-season games remaining, on the road against Vegas, San Jose and Los Angeles, then the final at home against Seattle on April 18.

“Nothing changes,” coach John Hynes told reporters at Ball Arena. “An elite player made some elite plays tonight. I think with the other components of the game, that was a huge difference. I’m not down on the team.

“I don’t like the fact that we lost the game, but we’ve got to continue to compete hard and play and find ways to win.”

Gustavsson made 28 saves for the Wild. Cale Makar also scored a goal, and Alexandar Georgiev stopped 20 of 22 shots for the Avalanche, which swept the season series from their Central Division rival (0-3-1).

The Wild’s points ceiling is now 91, one fewer point than Vegas, holding the last playoff spot in the West, already has. Seventh-place Los Angeles had 93 points before their late game at Anaheim. They entered with a slim chance at the postseason because they were 7-3-3 since March 10, and 32-21-5 since Hynes replaced Dean Evason as head coach on Nov. 28.

But limited by $14.7 million in dead salary cap space, the result of buying out the contracts of Zach Parise and Ryan Suter in 2021, the Wild started the season with no margin for error or misfortune — and immediately had their share of both.

They lost captain Jared Spurgeon before the season started, getting him on the ice for only 16 games all season because of back and hip injuries, then had to weather injury absences by such key contributors as Kaprizov, Boldy, Gustavsson, Mats Zuccarello, Jonas Brodin and Marcus Foligno.

Despite that, they played some good hockey, twice beating Eastern Conference leader Boston with depleted lineups in December, and scoring seven third-period goals to rally past then-NHL points leader Vancouver, 10-7, in February.

But the Wild also lost some costly head-scratchers, most notably a 6-0 loss to Arizona and 3-2 setback against Anaheim, both at Xcel Energy Center, when they were making headway in January.

Asked why he thinks the Wild finished short this season after making the playoffs the past three seasons, veteran defenseman Brodin said, “I don’t know right now. I have no clue. I haven’t thought about that. We’ll see after the season. We’ll play hard the rest of the season and then see after.”

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PHOENIX — The Arizona Supreme Court has delivered a landmark decision in giving the go-ahead to enforce a long-dormant law that bans nearly all abortions, drastically altering the legal landscape within the state around terminating pregnancies.

The law predating Arizona’s statehood provides no exceptions for rape or incest and allows abortions only if the mother’s life is in jeopardy. Arizona’s highest court suggested doctors can be prosecuted under the 1864 law, though the opinion written by the court’s majority didn’t explicitly say that.

The Tuesday decision threw out an earlier lower-court decision that concluded doctors couldn’t be charged for performing abortions in the first 15 weeks of pregnancy.

The law was enacted decades before Arizona became a state on Feb. 14, 1912. A court in Tucson had blocked its enforcement shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision guaranteeing the constitutional right to an abortion.

After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe decision in June 2022, then-Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican, successfully requested that a state judge lift an injunction that blocked enforcement of the 1864 ban.

The state Court of Appeals suspended the law as Brnovich’s Democratic successor, Attorney General Kris Mayes, urged the state’s high court to uphold the appellate court’s decision.

The law orders prosecution for “a person who provides, supplies or administers to a pregnant woman, or procures such woman to take any medicine, drugs or substance, or uses or employs any instrument or other means whatever, with intent thereby to procure the miscarriage of such woman, unless it is necessary to save her life.”

The Arizona Supreme Court suggested in its ruling Tuesday that physicians can be prosecuted, though justices didn’t say that outright.

“In light of this Opinion, physicians are now on notice that all abortions, except those necessary to save a woman’s life, are illegal” the ruling said. The justices noted additional criminal and regulatory sanctions may apply to abortions performed after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

The law carries a sentence of two to five years in prison upon conviction. Lawyers for Planned Parenthood Arizona said they believe criminal penalties will apply only to doctors.

The high court said enforcement won’t begin for at least two weeks. However, plaintiffs say it could be up to two months, based on an agreement in a related case to delay enforcement if the justices upheld the pre-statehood ban.

The ruling puts the issue of abortion access front and center in a battleground state for the 2024 presidential election and partisan control of the U.S. Senate.

Democrats immediately pounced on the ruling, blaming former President Donald Trump for the loss of abortion access after the U.S. Supreme Court ended the national right to abortion.

President Joe Biden and his allies are emphasizing efforts to restore abortion rights, while Trump has avoided endorsing a national abortion ban and warned that the issue could lead to Republican losses. The decision will give Arizona the strictest abortion law of the top-tier battleground states.

Staunch Trump ally and abortion opponent Kari Lake is challenging Democratic U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego in an Arizona race for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Kyrsten Sinema, who isn’t seeking a second term.

Under a near-total ban, the number of abortions in Arizona is expected to drop drastically from about 1,100 monthly, as estimated by a survey for the Society of Family Planning.

This past summer, abortion rights advocates began a push to ask Arizona voters to create a constitutional right to abortion. If proponents collect enough signatures, Arizona would become the latest state to put the question of reproductive rights directly before voters.

The proposed constitutional amendment would guarantee abortion rights until a fetus could survive outside the womb, typically around 24 weeks. It also would allow later abortions to save the mother’s life, or to protect her physical or mental health.

___

Lee reported from Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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For the first time, researchers have analyzed the DNA of rusty patched bumble bees across the insect’s range. The results add urgency to efforts to conserve the endangered species.

Using a non-lethal technique, scientists collected tiny leg sections from bees to determine their genetic makeup. They found low genetic diversity, and inbreeding.

“The numbers of colonies that those individuals represent are much lower than expected,” said lead author John Mola from Colorado State University. “Even in areas like the Upper Midwest, where the rusty patched bumblebee, at least insofar as insects can become famous, has become a little bit emblematic as a stronghold, this species is still at risk.”

The rusty patched bumble bee was once common from Minnesota to the northeastern U.S. and in the Appalachian Mountains.

Starting about 25 years ago, the bumble bee experienced a precipitous 90% population decline.

It was listed as endangered in 2017. In 2019, the rusty patched bumble bee was named the Minnesota state bee.

One of the remaining known populations is found around the Twin Cities.

University of Minnesota researcher Elaine Evans has been observing rusty patched bumble bees for 20 years.

This DNA analysis reinforced her concern that just adding more habitat might not be enough to save the species.

“As bee conservationists, we all just want to think about the bees out there living their best lives out in the wild, having enough habitat out there to do what they need to do,” Evans said. “But the reality of the situation might be they might get to a point where to keep the species going, they might need to be brought inside by people and captively raised.”

The study found genetic differences among isolated populations. The Appalachian bees are different genetically from Midwest bees, and the Minnesota bees had genetic variations from other Midwest bees.

Mola said that means conservation efforts should not mix genetically distinct populations.

The finding of low colony numbers also has implications for management decisions. Burning habitat produces better food for bees in the long term.

“What are the short-term consequences for that?” Molna asked. “Do we run a large risk of killing colonies when we burn? And if so, how do we find that balance between the long-term benefits of burning versus that short-term risk of mortality?”

That’s just one of the questions raised by this study that needs more research. But now bee conservationists have the baseline data to begin developing the strategy to save the endangered bee.

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