Spring Food (posted long after written...as usual)

Spring is always touted by everyone as an exciting and wonderful season.  They talk about the beginning of the nice weather and all the flowers and new leaves.  Like everyone else, I like those things...but representing spring by these things is like saying winter is about presents, feasts and decorated evergreen trees.

In reality, most of spring is about frustrated hope and waiting.  Hope that the snow will melt this week and that it won't be replaced next week.  Hope that this year April showers will NOT bring May showers.  Hope that your child will be able to make it from the house to the car without lying down in the mud pit you are pitifully calling a front lawn.  But the hardest part of Spring, for me, is the waiting.  I hate being so close to fresh food...but not having any of it.  In April, on the first nice days, I'm usually outside trying to convince myself that I don't need a pick ax to work the soil.  I drop the first frost hardy seeds into the ground with excitement, imagining the delicious harvest and then I ....sit there.  I tell myself SOON....be patient.  But I don't really get an abundance of produce from my garden until early July at the earliest.

Now, of course, the optimist will point out early spring crops like asparagus and rhubarb.  We did eat our first asparagus from the garden in early May, but it comes from 1 sole plant that I planted a few years ago on a whim.  I think we have already eaten the only harvest I can safely take from that plant.  I have a new asparagus bed in the making, but I will need to wait at least 3 long years to get anything from it.....more waiting.  As for the rhubarb....well you can read about my skills with rhubarb here.

If you know me, then you know that I don't care for frustrated hope and waiting, so spring is just going to have to change.  I've had a good long talk with the powers that be...he is working on global warming...but until that pans out, I need a different plan.  I need more early spring foods.  So imagine my delight when I learned that you can eat the shoots hostas send up first thing in the spring.  Not only are these shoots edible, hostas are actually cultivated in Japan solely for these shoots.

Sadly I got rid of most of my hostas years ago because I thought they were "useless ornamentals", but I have some left in spots with so much shade that I didn't know what else to do there.   I could barely wait for my remaining hostas to come up this year, so I could start experimenting in the kitchen.  I tried the shoots baked in the oven with asparagus and seasoned with oil, salt and pepper and Parmesan cheese.   They were quite tasty, but had a slight bitter after taste that I did not care for.  I tried preboiling them the next time, but that did little to remove the bitter after taste.  Any suggestions for next year?

Note the roasted hostas

A few other foods are on the spring menu.  I've been getting more into foraging lately which offers lots of opportunity for early spring foods.  So far I'm sticking only to plants I'm confident I can correctly identify, which limits things a little.  I was hoping to try fiddle heads, but the only ones worth eating apparently come from Ostridge ferns and I haven't been able to find any.  Cattails also send up some yummy spring shoots I'm looking forward to trying next year and if I'm feeling like a hard days work I can dig up the roots of the numerous giant burdock that grown along the trail near our house and eat those too.

Anyway, all my reading and researching about foraging has left me feeling greatly cheered about spring.  Now I can add finding this or that wild food to my list of spring hopes.  One of these springs I might actually even eat something!