Betwixt & Between
On my mind this past week has been the word “between.” One day it’s bitterly cold and the next, hot, and producers scramble to keep pace with the weather and protect their crops. King Family Vineyards posted this video documenting various strategies they employ when the vineyard experiences a cold snap. It’s so easy to romanticize many of the subjects we cover, but moments like these bring home how very hard the work is, how tender and delicate the line between a fruitful season or a scarce one.
In this between time when most farmers markets aren’t operating yet at a weekly schedule, and spring crops are still being sown, chefs find creative ways to flirt with spring on the plate. Often the first spring items to appear on a menu are foraged , such as these lovely redbud blossoms we enjoyed atop a yogurt parfait last weekend at Bloom Restaurant & Winebar in Roanoke.
If you'd like to try your hand at foraging, it’s easiest to start in spring. Violets, fiddlehead ferns and redbud blossoms stand out against brown hillsides. You can even help keep invasives in check by harvesting Japanese knotweed or chickweed. The Living Earth School, based in Charlottesville and Afton, offers foraging classes for all ages.
Perhaps the most endearing example of between is watching all the spring babies grow. From goats tottering around on still-new legs, to the cacophony of peeping chicks, these between stages are full of wonder.
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Thanks for reading, happy eating, and enjoy all those between moments of the season,
Lisa
EVENTS
Have an event you’d like us to share? Email: info@edibleblueridge.com
3.25 Taste of Downtown Cooking Demo - Harrisonburg
3.25 Coffee Tasting and Latte Art Competition - Harrisonburg
3.28 Watercolors & Wine - Barren Ridge Vineyards
4.15 Daze of Rosé Festival - Keswick
EVENT SPOTLIGHT: Lick Run Spring Social, April 8th ,10AM-2PM
All proceeds from this family friendly event will go toward supporting a local urban land ownership initiative to serve the Roanoke community.
MORE TO CHEW ON…
Communities struggle as food insecurity is on the rise and farmers face climate change challenges. Lawmakers have the chance to help as they draft the 2023 Farm Bill.
Why do leftovers taste so good? Are you pro next day pizza? Do you enjoy cold Lo Mein? Find out why.
WHAT WE’RE COOKING
POEM OF THE WEEK
small talk or in my hand galaxies
by Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley
it looks like the thief rocketed their whole self through the bull’s eye of my driver’s side door and you’re not wrong to expect the old joke about there being nothing in my car worth the thieving or maybe i’ve caught you eye rolling please god not another poem about windows but i cross my fingers hope to die suck on diesel and be hogtied i’ll avoid simile for the eye and soul and i’ll be careful as the fixer’s hands who came to pry waterlogged lining from my inner door her small boots crunching sun in the glittered puddle of fractured glass i think how i didn’t think to sweep but even so she is still kind i think to get her a glass of tap water now but then think of all the stairs she says this big sol reminds her of cuba y tu she asks but i don’t relish speaking spanish anymore i tell her no i have always lived here in miami i lie but offer my father was a mason and bueno too at that i’ve given her this one fractled truth as if it could be understood not to mistake my soft handshake for ignorance of all the working classes but she is not thinking of me only the door’s motor grinding she asks but what do i do i hope she will ask if maybe i am a mason myself but no i say i am maybe a writer me too she beams and offers a full palm of what she’d vacuumed from the doorframe shattered glass beads of blue refraction wonder she says wonder at all they have seen she insists ver towards the tiny eyelets en mi mano galaxias she says and i wonder how often i have mistaken myself for the seer for the see-er and others simply as the seen.
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