I love asparagus. Green asparagus, white asparagus, even purple asparagus. I could easily eat it every week and never tire of it. I love it with my mother’s hollandaise sauce and with this easy buttery caper sauce. But my favorite way to eat it right now is with this pickled lemon and feta, a simple recipe from the Chicago restaurant Avec. It’s lemony, a little bit spicy and salty, but still allows the asparagus to come through.

Growing up in Chicago, I always knew that Michigan grew a lot of asparagus, but I didn’t realize just how much. Michigan is currently the largest producer in the US, producing as much as 23 million pounds each year. Being this close to Michigan means that our local grocery store and every farmer’s market sells fresh, Michigan asparagus – even though most of the asparagus sold in the US these days is actually imported from Peru and Mexico. (Between 2004 and 2014, the amount of asparagus grown in the US decreased dramatically – by one estimate, by 64 percent – in large part due to these cheaper imports.)  

The asparagus season is winding down, but before it ends completely I wanted to grab this moment to talk about labor conditions in the asparagus industry. Although I just spent the past couple of months enjoying my local Michigan asparagus, I actually want to focus on asparagus grown in Germany, where eating white asparagus in the spring is a national pastime. I had never eaten white asparagus until I moved to Germany. But in Germany, every year in late spring, restaurants starts to list asparagus – Spargel – as the special. Markets and grocery stores sell it, and everyone gets really excited about Spargelzeit (asparagus time). I never learned to cook the white kind, but my wonderful roommate would cook it with prosciutto and potatoes – and it was always delicious!