it's spring...in washington

Remember all the convictions I once had about eating food in season and grown locally? Well, then I moved to Alaska. And it's May and I want to be eating spring vegetables. And the snow just melted a few weeks ago, so the farmer's market last Saturday had overwintered carrots, turnips, and potatoes, and flats of seedlings to start in the ground. So I found my lust for spring vegetables had to be satisfied at Fred Meyer with this asparagus flown in from Washington (that's kinda local, right? I mean, it's the West Coast...). Still, I was impressed with its tenderness and how thin the stalks were--often asparagus is picked too late, when it's big and fat and bitter tasting. This picture was taken just before roasting the asparagus in the oven. The finished product eventually became a part of Asparagus Lemon Pasta, mostly a hit but with a glitch--how to make a sauce that has milk (which I substituted for the cream) and lemon juice in it without said sauce curdling? We pretended I had made the dish with ricotta cheese and it tasted fine.