They say that it's the little things in life that really matter. Living out in the country offers a lot of those little things, and one of them shows up for a brief period of time each Spring.

I remember my Grandma Marie walking through the ditches picking her asparagus. It was never shared with me, I suspect because it grew in small batches, too valuable to waste on a child who might not care for it (it's one of the few vegetables that LB doesn't care for). But as an adult I truly understand the attraction.

With so many fruits and vegetables nowadays, we've largely lost the understanding of eating things that are "in season". If you go down to the local outlet for any major supermarket chain and search through the produce section you will, now, almost always find asparagus. This is of course because, like so much produce in the grocery store, it is grown in warmer climates and then shipped to the U.S.

As with so many of those other fruits and vegetables, it is different when it is grown at home. One of the most notable differences is size - when you pick up a bunch at the supermarket the spears are typically about a pencil size in both diameter and length. The home grown variety is typically as thick - or thicker - than my thumb, and they can get to nearly a foot in length (or longer, if you don't pick them quickly enough).

At this point we've had two batches out of that patch, with a third to come in the next day or two (they grow so quickly you have to check on them daily to see when they are ready to go). The first batch we roasted in olive oil, as a side to hamburgers. The second batch we did in garlic marinara over pasta. They were delicious both ways.

There is, of course, a somewhat unusual side effect to consuming asparagus. The NPR program How to Do Everything did an episode on this phenomenon. It turns out that it doesn't happen to everyone, and that not everyone can smell it. Kind of fascinating and well worth the listen.