Fresh from the Farmer’s Market: Weeks 2&3

It’s been a couple of crazy last weeks this semester, so I haven’t blogged for awhile, even though I’ve been cooking (it helps to handle the stress).  Summer’s here, as of today 🙂 so I’ll be posting to get caught up in the next week.

Last week, I went to the farmer’s market with one mission:  asparagus.  I had gotten there too late the week before, and missed out.  This week I was prepared and showed up earlier, as my last class of the day ended early (the two things are NOT connected! :-).  It ended up that several stalls were selling asparagus for $3  a bunch.  I chose a bunch that had very long stalks–1 1/2 feet long, in fact.  I’d not seen asparagus that long before, and wondered if it was the variety, or if it was more that the farmers waited for it to grow higher before harvesting.  I’m still not sure.

The stalks were of different thicknesses, some rather thick, a few quite thin.  The first time I cooked them I chopped them into 1-inch pieces, and put all of the pieces of the stalk in at the same time.  Because of this, the soft tops were done long before the base of the stalks were.  In fact, with a few more boiling experiments (I would have steamed them but I don’t own a steamer), I found I was unable to cook the bottom halves of the stalks–no matter how long they were boiled, they were tough and stringy.  Again, the variety?  Or the way it was grown?  Not sure.  However, next time I think I’ll stick to the more familiar short stems, as those generally cook all the way through, without toughness.

This week I was thinking ahead to my Grandma’s birthday, and had remembered there was a black walnut seller at the market.  I ended up buying a pound of chopped black walnuts (yes, black walnuts!  not English walnuts!  locally grown, too!), along with some locally produced raw honey as a gift for my grandparents.  I ended up not buying any strawberries–though they smelled wonderful–because I just have too much food right now to use up.  Plus, it’s the start of summer so I’m too busy to cook for the next couple of weeks.

I’ll post later about the cake–I’m planning to use some of the black walnuts in the cake, and the rest decorating the caramel frosting.