In article >,
Melba's Jammin' > wrote:

> Woo-hoo! American asparagus (Washington State? Dunno) on sale for
> $1.48/lb. Nice fat spears. I bought 2 bunches totalling 3#6 oz. for
> ~$5.00. When I started breaking it I noticed it was breaking high.
> :-( For the helluva it, I weighed that which I cooked: 26-3/4 ounces.
> More than half went to waste. Harummpphhh! And no, I'm not interested
> in peeling the tough ends for something else.


Try the taste test. I don't understand this "breaking" thing. I can't
figure out how to do it. I wonder if it's a "tv" thing. The tv cooks
do it, so we have to do it also. There is so much waste. I tried a
bite of one of the pieces I was going to toss. It was sweet and
crunchy, no toughness and no fiber. Why throw it out? Sure, the cut
end can get dried out and yucky, but why toss half? Just cut off the
fibrous part. If you don't know how much to cut off, just taste it.

Same with leeks. Everybody, except Katra and one other person, says you
have to throw out the green part. So I didn't. I cooked it separately,
and both my wife and daughter (both of whom had told me that the green
part wasn't good to eat) agreed that the green part was just fine. Of
course, cut off the dried out and fibrous part, but still, I doubled the
volume of usable leek. At US$1.99 a pound, I don't like throwing out
perfectly good food.

And then there's the broccoli stalks. They are sometimes better than
the heads.

And I don't peel any of these. I just cut off the tough parts.

--
Dan Abel

Petaluma, California, USA