With a twinkle in her eye and a plate waiting, English cook and food storyteller Clarissa Dickson Wright treated asparagus as more than a vegetable. It was something to savor, enjoy, and laugh about. The way we eat says something about who we are. Slowing down for a tender green spear can feel like a small kindness offered to the body that carries us through the day.

France’s Sun King, Louis XIV, loved asparagus so much that he wanted it even in winter. He turned to his Versailles gardener, Jean-Baptiste de La Quintinie, who found a way to coax the “king of vegetables” from the soil while the world outside held its breath in the cold. A royal craving became a gardener’s quiet triumph.

Asparagus has been called “bliss for around a pound” by food writer Nigel Slater. A member of the lily family, its name comes from the Greek word for stalk or shoot. People have cultivated it for more than two thousand years, delighting in those first crisp spring bites that wake up the tongue.

Roman satirist Juvenal once joked that for some, “their sole reason for living lies in their palate.” It is an exaggeration, yet there is a hint of truth in it. Food can stir the senses, gather people at the same table, and remind us that pleasure has its own gentle wisdom.

Asparagus is a nutrient-dense food, rich in folate, a known cancer fighter. It is a good source of potassium, fiber, vitamin B6, vitamins A and C, and thiamin. A single cup has more protein than a cup of cooked cornmeal, yet remains low in sodium with no fat and no cholesterol.

Whether you steam it and eat it plain or rest it under a little cheese, butter, or hollandaise, there is a simple joy in that first bright bite. You can almost taste the sun that lifted it from the earth.

As English essayist and poet Charles Lamb observed, “Asparagus inspires gentle thoughts.” Perhaps it also invites us to pay a little more attention to what is on our plate, how it arrived there, and the way we choose to enjoy it. Yum.

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