Asparagus Dedication

We had another great dinner last night and made quite the discovery. Ryan was in charge of cooking up some fish and carrots. I was in charge of the salad. The discovery=eating raw asparagus. We never knew this was possible until a recipe posted on our Organics to You Facebook page proclaiming it so! I was so unsure about this recipe that I checked several other sources and apparently asparagus is just fine raw. Well, why don't more people eat it in such a fashion?......That is what Ryan thought at least and why he was scared to try my raw asparagus salad. Aside from trying it, Ryan also thought it was unfair that he was in charge of more than half the meal. Little did he know (or I know, for that matter) how long it takes to prepare raw asparagus. Hours. You have to shave it down to thin little strips. I did this with our potato peeler because we don't have one of those fancy mandolins. As you can see by the pictures posted below, we were still cooking at 10pm! We didn't eat until around 10:30pm. And we did not finish eating until around 11:30pm (that is how you know it was a good meal!). Ryan eventually tried my salad and loved it, even though I do not think I will be making it again in the near future due to the lengthy preparation time. We both decided it was something that would be served in a fancy restaurant. The restaurant would put a tiny dab of the salad on a large plate with some thinly sliced toasted bread and a little drizzle of something or other and VIOLA $12 starter. This made us laugh as we piled it into our mouths. Asparagus has a surprisingly sweet flavor in it's raw state. The salad also included shaved fennel bulb. The fish was baked in freshly squeezed orange juice, garlic, basil and paprika. The carrots were sauteed in butter and brown sugar. All accompanied with a fine bottle of wine. Delicious.

We will be traveling to Seattle today for the weekend. Wish us luck following the rule as we are away from all our natural comforts and familiarities....not that Seattle is that different, but still!