First Harvest Of The Season

Homegrown Asparagus

 

It is so satisfying to pick and eat what you have grown.

My husband came in this afternoon and asked what I was serving for a vegetable with supper this evening.  (To some of you this meal is known as dinner…..not where I come from…..)  I told him that it was going to be beans I had canned last year.

He gave me the great suggestion that maybe we should have asparagus.  I went out to check the patch and sure enough…plenty of spears were coming up and ready to be picked.

By the time I was done I had picked more than a meal worth!  I am not sure what method you use to prepare your asparagus, but I have been steaming mine ever since my daughter-in-law gave me a steamer basket from Pampered Chef. This seems like a healthy way to prepare asparagus; but when we melt that delicious butter over it,  maybe not so much anymore?

Another recipe I love for asparagus is this one I found on Pinterest for Bacon Wrapped Asparagus.  This one calls for making it in the oven.  I really prefer to wrap them up in foil and do them on the grill.  I do however tweak this recipe for our tastes as my husband really despises garlic and is not fond of soy sauce.  I have posted my tweaked version below.

Picking our patch of asparagus brought back memories of lazy afternoons, years past, spent combing the ditches and line fences in search of those wonderful spears. We would drive past prospective spots and jump out, bag in hand, to get as many as we could.  I have a feeling our boys remember those days tromping through the ditches, hopefully, in a good way.

It was always pretty exciting when you found a patch that contained lots of the really good fat spears instead of those skinny ones.  We’d scramble and look through the grass around that patch a little harder to make sure we didn’t miss any.

We finally got tired of trying to outwit, outplay and outlast all the other asparagus pickers in this area and started are own patch several years ago.  It was one of the best decisions ever!  We get plenty of asparagus and don’t have to worry about the various sprays used in those ditches and along those fields.

I am told an asparagus patch, properly tended, can last for 25 – 30 years……at our age I think we’re gonna be good on that one…….

My husband observed that if we had only caught the fish we also had for supper; we would have picked, caught and/or preserved everything we had for our meal. Our Yukon Gold potatoes from last year are sprouting in the burlap sack but are still nice and firm and oh so good.

The apple crisp we had for dessert came from apples picked from a neighbors’ tree, canned into apple pie filling last fall and enjoyed now.

Apple Crisp

 

I’ll get you the recipe for the pie filling and the crisp at a later date.

 

 

Bacon Wrapped Asparagus
12 slices bacon
36 Asparagus spears
2/3 cup Brown Sugar
1/2 cup Butter
Divide spears into groups of three
Wrap one slice bacon around each group, secure with toothpick
Place on double layer of foil
Heat brown sugar and butter to boiling
Pour over asparagus
Fold foil over asparagus/bacon groups and seal
Grill till done.
Unfortunately I have never timed this
but they seem to take the same length of time as the pork chops I am grilling do.

Let my words, like vegetables,
be tender and sweet,
for tomorrow I may have to eat them.
–  Author Unknown

For all things produced in a garden,
whether of salads or fruits,
a poor man will eat better that has one of his own,
than a rich man that has none.
–  J. C. Loudoun