I like to eat with the season. For me, strawberries in January are, well, weird – strawberries are for early summer (unless I froze some!) I prefer to eat local produce; especially for vegetables, I like food that hasn’t been shipped and warehoused. For several years, I’ve been a member of a CSA – that’s for Community Supported Agriculture – where I had a share of what the farm produced. Some years our share was fabulous and abundant, some years not so much.
There will be no CSA for us this year. We plan to travel more, and with an unpredictable schedule the box each week just isn’t practical. We’ll be trying a box from Door to Door Organics once in a while, but mainly we’ll shop at the local farmers market for the freshest stuff we can find.
This week I found treasure: young leeks, asparagus, and ramps. Ramps are hard to find; they’re not grown commercially but found in the wild, and only in early spring. Ramps are essentially wild leeks with a pungent earthy garlic-onion flavor. They are extremely perishable, so I used them all that same day, in one large glorious leek/ramp/asparagus omelet for two.
If you’re lucky enough to find ramps, here’s a roundup of recipes from The Kitchn featuring the most fleeting vegetable of the spring season.