Thursday, September 30, 2010

Asparagus

I've just started reading one of the books I've borrowed from Anna: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingslover. It is wonderful so far. Stunning. Apply almost any positive adjective you like. I am only thirty pages in and already I've wanted to type pages and pages of it out for you, but here is an excerpt, the most recent (but not the best) that I've read and fallen for:

"Pushing a refrigerated green vegetable from one end of the earth to another is, let's face it, a bizarre use of fuel. But there's a simpler reason to pass up off-season asparagus: it's inferior. Respecting the dignity of a spectacular food means enjoying it at its best. Europeans celebrate the short season of abundant asparagus as a form of holiday. In the Netherlands the first cutting coincides with Father's Day, on which restaurants may feature all-asparagus menus and hand out neckties decorated with asparagus spears. The French make a similar party out of the release of each year's Beaujolais; the Italians crawl over their woods like harvester ants in the autumn mushroom season, and go gaga over the summer's first tomato.
Waiting for foods to come into season means tasting them when they're good, but waiting is also part of most value equations. Treating foods this way can help move 'eating' in the consumer's mind from the Routine Maintenance Department over to the Division of Recreation."

1 comment:

  1. Whoa - that is rather good. And I can easily see why you're enthralled. PLUS, I absolutely agree with her opening sentence. In fact! Apparently, lots of the produce in the US comes from out west anyways, so by virtue of living out here it's fresher - and some of it just tastes AMAZING! There really is something different about picking it when it's ready, and then eating it - rather than harvesting early and shipping it across the country.
    Yet one more reason to start a homestead. :-)

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