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Incredible Diversity of Fresh Asparagus: Colors and Sizes
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April 26, 2018

Incredible Diversity of Fresh Asparagus: Colors and Sizes

In Europe, chefs almost always use white asparagus, rarely green. Because white asparagus beautifully offers up luscious notes of corn and sweet cabbage, we fully appreciate their love of this marvelous vegetable. European farmers mound soil over the asparagus plants to block the chlorophyll process, which creates the white color. But, these plants need to push hard through the soil and end up with tough outer skins that need peeled off. This adds labor (costs and time) to the mix, and then the most nutritious part of the vegetable is thrown away.

More About the Nutrition in Vegetable Peels

To demonstrate the nutrition, Farmer Lee Jones likes to share an apocryphal story, one involving a farmer who was very worried about his sick mother. “Doc,” he pleaded with the town doctor, “Ma is so sick that she’s stopped doing any farm chores, even cooking. You’ve got to help us.”

Asparagus

The doctor agreed and, as soon as he could, he hurried to the farm in his horse and buggy. Pounding on the door of the farmhouse, he only had a few seconds to observe a bucket full of potato peels by the front door before rushing in to see his patient. He did what he could to help Ma get better as quickly as possible. As he was leaving, though, he asked the farmer about the bucket of potato peels.

“Oh, those,” the farmer replied. “After we prepare our dinner, we throw the potato peels in the bucket and feed them to the hogs.”

“Well,” the doctor said in return. “That’s part of your problem.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re feeding your hogs,” the wise doctor said, “better than you’re feeling your own mother.”

Vegetable peels. They are chock full of nutrition. Here is what Berkeley University has to say about the nutritional value of the peels of fruits and vegetables.

Now Back to the Diversity of Asparagus

Besides the range of colors of fresh asparagus, this wonderful spring vegetable also comes in a range of sizes, from half the thickness of a number two pencil to as big as your thumb (and wonderful sizes in between).

Asparagus Harvest Team

To provide our chefs with what they need, we harvest the asparagus, which grows in the thicknesses intended by Mother Nature – and then we sort them, offering them in just the right thicknesses for chefs’ creative applications.

Much as we love winter root vegetables with their hearty flavors, we admit to longing for spring, for eagerly waiting to harvest that first incredible asparagus plant that signifies the new season. How about you?
 

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