My head feels aflame this season. I don’t think it’s just allergies, though my eyes are burning. No, spring is truly sprouting and the air is heady and rich with new blooms. The local wildflowers signal in great waves like LED beacons of red, yellow, purple, pink and white to the imminent flood of produce from farms all around us. Strawberries are here; asparagus, peas and morels are peaking. And, just in time for Easter, the fava beans are starting to rise from the earth like the lamb of god himself. [Note: favas and lamb are a divine combination]
Praise be!
My burgeoning obsession for produce grows ever more delirious around springtime. I crave rapini and various flowering mustards. I felt practically anemic the last few months going without Will’s avocados. But I covet favas and I’m not sure there’s anything I look forward to more all year — except maybe Stan Devoto’s Pink Pearl and Arkansas Black apples — than the sight of these beautiful green pods at the farmers market.
I’m growing favas for the first time this year. The flower is absurdly pretty, velvet black and white and filigreed like a pontiff’s crown. I’ve clearly stunted the plants’ growth by using old wine crates but improvisation is the plight of many apartment dwellers. Still, it’s all I can do not to constantly sit outside and just watch the damn things grow millimeter by millimeter. I’ve spent many nights outside with my headlamp hunting for snails and other garden ne’er-do-wells. I’m no buddhist. I will throw my arm out heaving those things to the ground with force.
I’ve got my fingers in the dirt now more than ever — at Alemany Farm, Garden for the Environment, Little City Gardens, and in my own ramshackle cracks-in-the-concrete space outside my apartment — and it’s got me thinking a lot about the edible environment around me. I’ve long thought of fava beans as an almost exotic crop, an heirloom produce that most people wouldn’t recognize outside of Italy where it’s as common and prolific as pot herbs. But I’ve seen it everywhere this year, at Alemany Farm, in community gardens and even in other front yards.
And that’s great. The bright fresh flavor of these beans (or peas, really) is every bit as intoxicating as the smell on your hands after picking a tomato. If more people are introduced to favas, it could spur them to seek out their own little cracks in the pavement, median strips, or even support the development of new community spaces. Or maybe they’ll just dip into the next healthy packaged food craze at Whole Foods while protesting the new community space down the street. The power of favas can only go so far.
But there is nothing like the satisfaction of eating from one’s own land, container, rooftop or window. The exhilaration of spring’s blossoming and bright flavors is balanced by simple preparations. While I anxiously await my miniature bounty of favas, I foraged some wild onions just up the hill and picked some greens and herbs right from my front patio. A squeeze of lemon and a drizzle of olive oil. Good god. Gone are the warm, hearty soups and braises of winter. Here are the salad days of spring.
