The First Harvest of Spring

The spring plants are late in coming out of hiding this year, despite some recently gorgeous weather. However, one day in the pouring rain, Molly and I picked a bucket full of fiddleheads. These are just the curled up buds of newly emerging ferns that grow plentiful here in the Far North (and lots of other places too). There are several different varieties of ferns here, and you can eat all but one (of which I'm fairly certain there are none around our house).

Fiddleheads are easy, you just rub off the brown coating that coats some of the ferns. Then I blanched them in boiling water for a couple of minutes and sauteed them in butter and garlic and a little lemon juice. They taste earthy and a lot like asparagus - fantastic. Even Porter ate some. A very tasty little Alaskan side dish, even if we did have them next to sloppy joes.

I can't take credit for this photo, but ours looked quite similar...

We all enjoyed our sun filled weekend here too. Cedar went on her first boat ride, which she promptly slept, nursed and pooped through, rather unimpressed. The kids also got to visit our small town Alaskan version of a farm, with goats, chickens and horses. Which they even got to ride. I think Porter was a little more unsure than Molly.

Our weather streak continues today, which also happens to be Porter's last day of preschool EVER. Although I will certainly be back there for many years to come, it was sad to see Porter moving on. He has grown up so much in the past two years with two of the best teachers in the world, and we have so many great memories. So even though Porter really didn't seem to see it as a sad thing, I got a little teary as we left to get in our car. So long preschool and welcome summer time.