Heartwings says, “It’s true that food can be medicine, and asparagus is.”
My father ate asparagus with his fingers, picking up each stalk up by the end, dipping it in butter and slowly savoring its length. The end was always discarded. At fancy spring dinners my grandmother and my great aunt served asparagus on toast points–crustless toasted bread cut into triangles. There would also be hollandaise sauce or butter poured over the asparagus or served separately by a maid in a shiny black uniform and a starched white apron. This was eaten with a knife and fork.
In those days, coming only in the Spring, fresh asparagus was considered a great treat. My mother disliked canned vegetables and did not serve them, considering canned vegetables to be lacking in vitamins. Today frozen asparagus is easy to find and the fresh stalks can often be bought all the year round. However, it’s the local asparagus that is the real treat. Regardless of its availability, I only really crave it in the spring.
There is a reason it grows and is harvested early in the spring in New England: Asparagus has a wonderful effect on the body, gently cleansing the kidneys as well as the bowels. It serves the helpful purpose of helping us eliminate the leftover winter toxins from our systems. It is an important food that is also a medicine. It is delicious, can be eaten freely and will not cause any untoward symptoms. What a wonderful treat that something that tastes so good is so very good for you.
Euell Gibbon’s book Stalking the Wild Asparagus is a classic on foraging and eating wild vegetables. His description of how at the age of twelve he discovered the wild asparagus is quite enchanting. He admits that wild or tame, they taste the same, except for the thrill of finding your own wild harvest. Actually, this perennial plant, with the help of the birds who ate its seeds, originally escaped from the gardens where it was cultivated and proceeded to grow enthusiastically wherever it could. The wild stalks can be located by searching out the dried seed stalks. These look like feathery miniature trees that have dried up and turned to straw.
According to Mysterious Herbs and Roots, Mitzie Stuart Keller, Peace Press 1978, asparagus was once a royal food reserved for rulers and kings. A member of the lily family, it is related to chives, leeks, garlic, and onions. Wild asparagus, one of the oldest known plants, was believed to have grown in the salt marshes of Asia Minor thousands of years before the earliest recorded history and was unknown in Europe prior to 4 BC. Alexander the Great discovered it when he went searching in the land of Medea, where legend had it that she gave Jason of Argonaut fame the secret of eternal youth. High in vitamin E, it has been for centuries reputed to be an aphrodisiac and was treasured by rulers of many nations. The Romans maintained armed guards to protect their beds from thieves, while royal gardeners made money on the side from selling the seeds.
May you enjoy your medicine as food, and relish this spring treat.
Blessings and best regards, Tasha Halpert
PS Tales to tell or hints to share? Please write to me at tashahal@gmail.com It’s a great treat for me to hear from readers.
My mother wasn’t one for desserts and she didn’t like to bake, so if there was something to be made in the oven, she occasionally enlisted my help. I was also allowed in the kitchen of a friend who visited her grandmother in the summer. Her grandmother had a cook who was kind enough to let us mess up her tidy domain, so my friend and I spent happy hours making brownies.
The phrase “waste not want not,” sounds as though it might have come from the Bible, however it did not. It also sounds like old fashioned New England thrift. My mother being German, definitely learned the concept from her experience. I have found it useful in trying to utilize whatever food I might have left over from any meal. In my book, wasting food is not to be done.
There was an advertising phrase that went, “Nothing says loving like something from the oven…” however, I think the advertising agency had it backward. It’s the love in the preparation that does this. The oven only helps, as do the ingredients, preferably as clean and fresh as possible. Love helps us to choose them, as well as to guide the utensils used in the preparation. Furthermore, the focus of the mind is an important ingredient as well. If I am angry or upset when I am preparing food, it could affect the way it tastes as well as the way it is digested. Though I can’t prove it, it’s my belief that thoughts and feelings can be powerful in their effect on food.
During most of history, people ate what they had put away for the winter in their cellars and barns. In Colonial New England, unless someone had a greenhouse a midwinter salad was unheard of. In the Middle Ages in Europe and Russia, fasting during Lent was a necessity because what little food was available to most by late winter had to be hoarded and used carefully. People ate with the seasons. Forty years ago on a late spring trip to Russia with my mother I recall cabbage being served to us daily. It keeps well if properly stored.
Though I’ve never had it or made it myself, I remember Goldenrod Eggs–a dish made with hard boiled eggs that my mother served at luncheon parties. The eggs were carefully hard cooked—never boiled as this turns the yolks green. The whites were chopped up and stirred into a white cream sauce. This was spread over toast with the crusts cut off and made into triangles. The yolks were then pressed through a sieve and sprinkled over the top of the creamed whites.
Days and nights are equal now that it’s the Equinox, and it’s time to think balance. Green vegetables bring cleansing to the body and help eliminate the winter accumulation we inherit from the cold months. The following recipes can help. It’s good to connect with each season by serving the seasonal fruits and vegetables. This recipe uses dandelion greens, available in markets in the spring and later in your yard all later spring and summer,(though not tasty while they blossom) and either Asparagus or any leafy green such as kale, collards, curly endive, Swiss chard or spinach.
Pujakins 