Local Wild Asparagus
Well, In my effort to eat locally as much as possible I have found that our farmers markets don't open until July, and the local small produce seller has only stuff from CA primarily. (I have begun to believe that the idea of eating locally must have been conceived by a CA native. They seem to have everything there all the time. ) At any rate, I have been able to pull a few things from my own garden this week and have had a few good meals because of it. For instance, yesterday I enjoyed a delicious salad for lunch with buttercrunch lettuce, spinich and radishes from the garden. This afternoon I ate some steamed home grown chard with my tofu and rice (not from the garden obviously.) and supplemented it with some wild asparagus that I harvested not three minutes by bike from my house. Here is a couple of picture that I got of the plants.
They are just about grown out; I unfortunately found them a little to late in the season to get much from them this year but next spring Oh yeah!! They were tender and tasty and you can't get more local than wild now can you? I was inpired to go out and and pick up a couple of books from the library about wild foods of the Rocky Mountain region. If I can find any more good eats I'll keep you posted.
P~
7 comments:
Wow, what a find! Thanks for sharing the pictures. I doubt I would have even recognized this plant as asparagus had I found it.
Enjoy!
They don't always have everything in California, it just seems that way to the rest of us.
I have to say, though, sometime in February, looking at another bowl of bean & dried tomato & dried kale soup I think...why did anyone ever decide to live in Minnesota?
Our farm share starts next week! Is there an active CSA where you live? Sometimes they do early-early stuff before the farmer's markets (greens mostly).
I ran late and had a flat tire today and gave up and got a car ride to work, and I thought of you.
~Rosa, You know I just tried Kale for the first time the other day, not bad. But I could see it getting tiresome over a winter. Do you grow and dry yours, or dry what you get from the CSA? speaking of which, yes, we do have one nearby, and no I am not participating in it, at least not this year. I didn't learn about it until just recently, and will also be away for nearly three weeks for a vacation so I would be wasting it. My wife ~A and I were talking about it last night though and thought that next spring it would definitely be a good idea. We do have a lot of local growers and two farmers markets that we can hit as well as a decent garden in our own yard. I've found this year that planning and forethought are my biggest shortcomings in eating locally, so those are my biggest areas of work.
Thanks for thinking of me. On my second day riding to work, I had to have A~ pick me up to bring me home due to not one, but TWO flats. Big nasty thorn and a roofing nail got me that day. I adamently suggest "Green Goo" for your tires. It seals itself for most small punctures, and even if the tire does go flat, it can be reinflated most times and will hold air. I swear by the stuff.
P~
Jealous, very jealous, as you may know we eat wild foods. I've never found asparagus! :(
Have you tried ramps? I love both onions and garlic and I understand that it is a lot like both of them.
P~
Have I complained here about the shade-to-sun ratio in my yard? Anyway, we have a city lot with a lot of nice big trees, lots of lead in the soil, and probably arsenic (they haven't tested our block yet but every block they test in our neighborhood, they find it.) So I grow some stuff in raised beds but we eat it all as it comes in, except for some winter squash.
I do dry the kale myself, though. I actually dry a lot of stuff, I have a great food dehydrator and it gets constant use in July, August, September, and October. I buy stuff at the farmer's market when it is in season, and we have belonged to a variety of CSAs. It's actually the CSA boxes that pushed me to eat greens - it's been long enough now that I have several greens recipes, most of them good made with any of several different greens. The first year we belonged to the CSA was sort of difficult for me - we ate sauteed cooking greens with a bowl of salad greens four nights a week in May-June, until other foods came in.
Rosa, I'm thinking about getting a food dehydrator and am wondering what brand/model you have found that you like. This is our first year doing any vegetables in our small urban yard. I anticipate having a lot of Roma tomatoes to dry. I'd also consider doing blueberries from a farm. Thanks for the help!
Post a Comment