In which I learn much about pickling asparagus.

First, I must give a huge shoutout to Agriberry! Not only do they have fabulous strawberries right now (and other luscious berries soon to come, in addition to the best peaches around come summer, and hands-down the most amazing Honeycrisp apples in the fall) Anne (the owner) hooked me up with a couple of pounds of the best asparagus to be found anywhere. And I mean anywhere. Not just Richmond, or Virginia. Seriously, I wait all year for the Agriberry asparagus, and when it arrives at my local farmers market (and really, I go to every market on a rotating basis.... share the love!!) I buy pounds and pounds of it and eat it daily. Sometimes twice a day. So I was sad when their season was ending and I still hadn't gotten any to pickle. Luckily I ran into Anne at a midweek market, and she said she'd try to save a couple of pounds for me to pick up today. Like the fabulous farmer-lady she is, she came through, and I joyously bought several pounds of her asparagus today, when no one else in Richmond, no matter which market they were at (Agriberry is at just about every local Saturday market) was able to buy some. One more reason to know your farmers, kids!

One more big thank you goes to Mr. Leonard's Sharpening Service, who is at the St. Stephens Saturday market every other weekend. He did a killer job sharpening my chef's knife and my paring knife. Sharp knives are things of beauty in the kitchen! What a great idea to have a knife sharpener at a farmers market!

So, to the asparagus! I went with a pretty classic recipe, not dilly, not overly herby, with a little kick and some interesting flavors I think will be subtle and delicious.... I happily set about washing my lovely long spears.

I specifically chose the 12 oz jelly jars since they are tall and skinny. They seemed perfect for asparagus, and the recipe I chose concurred. So after washing my asparagus, I trimmed it down to fit the jars. This was the result:

I was a bit surprised at how little I was left with to pickle, when I had this much "refuse" left over:

 So since there were some super long stems in there, and I only had 4 jars of tips packed, I did a jar of stems... I figured we can taste those for flavor, since Agriberry asparagus stems are just as yummy as the tips! After adding my secret spices, here's what I had:

That's five sterilized 12 ounce jelly jars, which I then topped with sterilized lids, and processed in a hot water bath for 10 minutes. The result:

 Some stray observations:

• In my initial research, there seems to be a lot of debate about packing your jars tips-up or tips-down. I packed mine tips up because I thought they'd look nicer, though I had to be a little more gentle with them.

• Next time I'll choose shorter asparagus. I thought it would matter if they were straighter, but the curvy ones packed just as easy. No big thang.

• Will thick stems matter versus thin stems? We'll have to see when we taste them!

• One of my secret ingredients was chunks of freshly smashed nutmeg. Someone please tell me what to do with the rest of this nutmeg!

• These will be ready to taste in three weeks, right when we can taste the pickled garlic scapes! Anyone wanna have a pickle picnic with me? I have some leftover pickles from last season that need to be eaten! Beets, romanesco, eggplant, bread and butter zucchini, cauliflower, pears, and watermelon rind. Sounds like a party! Wooooo!