Local Asparagus!

Roasted asparagus (front) and rhubarb compote (back) which we used on both the chicken we had for dinner, and the homemade vanilla ice cream we had for dessert. The rhubarb was from a friend's garden.

In "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle", Barbara Kingsolver's family decided to start their year of eating locally when the first asparagus appeared as the herald of Spring. By that accounting, Spring is finally here! Bought my first bunch of Washington grown asparagus earlier this week. Above you can see it fresh from roasting in the oven with a little olive oil, salt and pepper, my favorite way to eat asparagus. Yum! I managed to resist the temptation of the California asparagus that hit the stores weeks ago, and am glad I did. It was well worth the wait.

I picked up two more bunches at the Yakima Fruit Market this morning. One bunch will be cooked exactly as above, but I think I might use the other bunch to make mushroom and asparagus pizza tonight!

My cat Marlowe is intrigued by this new addition to the patio.

While at Yakima Fruit Market (alternately known by locals as "The Yak"), I also picked up this lovely cherry tomato plant, which started its life Snohomish County. I wanted to see if I could grow something on our patio, and whenever I told anyone that I was frustrated because it doesn't get as much sun as most edible plants seem to like, their response was always "try cherry tomatoes." So, there they are. Wish me luck. I plan to get some herbs sometime soon too.

(I have to confess that even though I did resist the temptation of California asparagus, I wasn't able to block out the siren call of California strawberries. I love berries so much! They had to travel over 1200 miles to get here! I also got a couple of avocados, that probably traveled even further. Just needed to remind myself of that.)

Happy Earth Day!

These are my new "Stop Global Warming" eco-sneaks from Simple. Not only does Simple make really cute and comfortable shoes, they do it in a very eco-friendly way. Made in Santa Barbara, California, where some say Earth Day started (and yours truly went to college there too!)

Santa Barbara, California Community Environmental Council: The story goes that Earth Day was conceived by Senator Gaylord Nelson after a trip he took to Santa Barbara right after that horrific oil spill off our coast in 1969. He was so outraged by what he saw that he went back to Washington and passed a bill designating April 22 as a national day to celebrate the earth.

Read more about Simple shoes here.

easing down the rabbit hole...

It has been way toooooooo long between posts here. I'm still on this adventure, and I keep coming up with blog post ideas and then not posting them. Just not a very diligent blogger I guess.

This morning my friend Ellen wrote this brilliant post about going green on her blog that I thought I'd share here as a way to ease back into my blog. Now that Spring is here (not necessarily in weather - it snowed, rained and hailed all weekend - but I did finally find and buy the first Washington grown asparagus of the year yesterday), I am recommitting to blogging here more regularly.