I found myself daydreaming this morning about the time 20 years ago my girlfriends and I went to Ste. Chapelle Winery in Southern Idaho and bought five 20 lb. boxes of freshly cut aspargus for pickling. They grew it in the orchards and the vineyards and would cut the spears fresh every morning of the growing seasons. We got up early one Saturday morning in April, stopped for coffee and drove out there laughing and talking - so glad NOT to be driving into Key Bank for another day of work. We were startled by the sheer size of the boxes and were glad we hadn't brought my little VW Cabriolet but had driven my friend's Chevy Blazer instead. When we got home we put the music on, set up a production line in my kitchen and pickled aspargus all day long!
It was so much fun and at the end of the day, when my husband got home from a day of kayaking on the Payette River, we had rows and rows of warm quarts and pints of the beautiful green spears layered with red peppers and creamy garlic cloves sitting on towels on the dining room floor. By then we were drinking wine and beer and sitting with our feet up feeling pretty good about our accomplishment.
My daughter and I pickled aspargus together for the first time last year and, although it was a much smaller scale operation, we had a great time! We've been eating it all winter and I can't wait for spring to bring the new crop to us. I'd like to order some crowns and plant my own plants. When I was a kid we used to pluck it off the ditch banks and eat it raw. The produce manager, Gordon, at Rosaurs told me that the huge Aspargus fields in central Washington have been torn out in the last 10 years to make way for the wineries since the land is so perfect for different types of grapes. I can't really complain about that.... Better just start growing my own aspargus to satisfy my cravings.
