Spring green garlic and asparagus (heaven)
My burst of wild productivity last week came to a screeching halt mid-week when I started to feel the effects of the insanely productive pollen-makers in the area. My throat got scratchy and my head filled up with a puffy, thick cloud of green-smelling vapor. I went from thinking Oh, joyous spring, how I love you and your winter-rescuing ways! — to — Oh, spring! Kiss my ass and die you poison-generating bastard of the earth! Within two days it moved into my chest and has settled there with a deep, barking cough and a garbagy, green expectorating that has me thinking maybe a visit to the Dr. is in order.
Meanwhile, the potatoes wait impatiently on the piano bench.
Maybe tonight after work. I tried yesterday but just walking around the yard left me wheezing like an 85 year-old asthmatic. We went down to the old house to deal with a few things and I brought along my digging fork so I could raid the garlic patch that I knew would have re-seeded after my shoddy harvests the last two years. There wasn’t quite as much as I thought there’d be, but the grass has grown up around it pretty thick, so I shouldn’t be surprised.
While there, I also dug up the 3 beautiful ferns that Debra let me gank from her gorgeous property a few years ago. I had stuck them in a terrible spot in the northeast corner of the garden and they were knee-deep in standing water, but the fiddleheads are breaking the surface of the root clump. I’m hopeful they’ll be thrilled to find a new home in our little wood lot here in Kent with its shady, rich soil and plenty of other shade-loving plants around to talk to. Yes. I think they talk to one another. What of it?
We’ll probably head down again next weekend to take care of a few more things in preparation of either the sale or the rent-to-own situation that’s hopefully imminent. Two offers on the table, and we’re just weighing the loss (either way we end up eating a large chunk of change and having to float a loan to finish paying the mortgage on a house we don’t live in, good times!)
So next weekend I’ll dig up some more perennials out of the front bed, and some more comfrey which has taken over the little back kitchen garden. I also saw some Dame’s Rocket that I’d like to move over here, and I think I’d like to populate the edge line of the woods with some wild garlic mustard, which for some reason doesn’t seem to grow here. It makes great spring greens for salad and soup, and I hear it’s a nice pesto, too.
I’ll also make another stop at the farm stand, where I bought 5 lbs. of freshly picked asparagus yesterday. Oh my. Just look at this.
They had a massive shallow pan with at least 100, 1 lb. bunches standing in an inch of water. It had just been picked that morning and the cuts on the bottom where they had snapped them off were still raw. I couldn’t believe they were selling it for $2.99 a bunch. The smaller farm stand closer to me had them last year for $5 a bunch. I’m definitely going back to buy more, but will enjoy the hell out of the 5 lbs. I bought for this week, starting with green garlic linguini with Romano cheese and grilled asparagus for supper.
It smelled like heaven (or Little Italy) in my house and even out in the yard while the garlic simmered in butter. You can sort of see the last hunk of local Amish butter in the background there sitting on the wax paper. I’d already used close to an entire stick, but then figured why bother saving back just a couple of tablespoons of the last of the 2 lb. roll? I threw it into the pan and cackled as my arteries hardened just watching it melt. Hello, Paula Deen!
Excellent spring meal. And bonus, there’s leftovers so guess what I’m having for lunch?
"In summer we live out of doors, and have only impulses and feelings, which are all for action, and must wait commonly for the stillness and longer nights of autumn and winter before any thought will subside; we are sensible that behind the rustling leaves, and the stacks of grain, and the bare clusters of the grape, there is the field of a wholly new life, which no man has lived; that even this earth was made for more mysterious and nobler inhabitants than men and women. In the hues of October sunsets, we see the portals to other mansions than those which we occupy."
~Henry David Thoreau
May 5th, 2008 at 6:54 am
We had roast asparagus last night, too - my neighbors are very generous with their patch.
That shit is going for $7.29/# here, organic. There will still be long lines for the stuff at the Market this weekend, in spite of the incredibly high price.
May 5th, 2008 at 6:56 am
Heaven indeed! I just got my first asparagus of the year from a friend yesterday, so I hope to make some pasta tonight to go with it.
Hope you can ditch the congestion and wheezing and pollen-induced crap SOON.
May 5th, 2008 at 8:50 am
Come and get more ferns! They multiply rapidly here. And anything else you want
xoxo d
May 5th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
OK, I’m going to show my ignorance. The only way I ever knew about using garlic was the little cloves I break off the thing (don’t know it’s called) that I buy at the store. So, are you chopping up the green plant?
I was also confused years ago when I noticed a great-aunt making home canned dill pickle was using what looked like bulbs that were growing on top of tall onion looking plants in her garden and she called it garlic. I said I thought garlic had to be dug to get the cloves. She replied: “Oh, no, you don’t dig it.” I kept my mouth shut after that. So… can someone enlighten me about all these confusing aspects of garlic. Are these all the same kind of plant?????
May 6th, 2008 at 9:51 pm
Your dinner looks so yummy!! Looking forward to some local asparagus around here!
May 7th, 2008 at 9:43 am
pasta w. asparagus looks gorgeously delicious!
what I do miss about living in ne ohio are the farms + farm stands…..man great farm fresh produce abounds there! Good soil too.
I have to BUY soil here just to plant a few herbs.
Don’t miss that lake effects snow tho slapping on the neck. I was always pregnant in ohio so that’s all I remember: snow, babies+good food
May 8th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
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