RAMPS!

[kellyd]

I don't know if anyone has had ramps (aka wild leeks), but they are hands down one of my favorite foods. Imagine a combination of onion, garlic and greens all in one plant, and that's basically what a ramp is. They grow wild in the mountains in the early spring, and every year my dad heads up to West Virginia to get a bushel of them. You boil them, then fry them in bacon grease (I like to fry them with potatoes and douse them with vinegar). They are one of those foods you either love or hate (my dad and I love them, my mom and my sister... not so much) basically because they smell, and I mean [i]really[/i] smell. When you cook them the aroma will probably hang around for a couple of days, but I personally don't think it's a bad smell, just a strong one. I've been told I'm wrong about that though.

Some places (mostly in West Virginia) have ramps festivals in April and May. There's a list of them here:

http://www.richwooders.com/ramp/ramps.htm

When I was little, my great grandma had her own "ramp feed" every year. She'd fry them up with with potatoes and make brown beans, corn pone, hot rolls, and bacon. It was unreal. I looked forward to it every year. This year I'm hoping to have a ramp feed of my own. A lot of my friends have never had ramps and are eager to give them a try. My dad dropped off a giant bag of them this weekend.

[img]http://bloodynose.hypermart.net/dirtyramps.jpg[/img]
dirty ramps
[img]http://bloodynose.hypermart.net/cleanramps.jpg[/img]
clean ramps

[Blue]

Don't take this the wrong way, but you're as nasty as my husband! He's from South East Kentucky near both the TN and VA border and he stinks up my house with those nasty things every year! He fries them up with potatoes, then has corn pone and boiled cabbage and pork tenderloin with it - what a stink! It smells like the whole of Ireland puked in my kitchen.

[kellyd]

Hahaha, I can't help myself, I love these things! It's funny how "love them or hate them" they are. My mom gets so tense every spring when she knows dad is about to bring some home because she knows she won't be able to get the smell out of her house for days. We got lucky this year, for some reason when I cooked them they weren't that smelly (unlike last year when my kitchen smelled like them for about a week). But I think they still ended up scaring people off. I had some friends who told me they'd love to try them, but when I invited them over for dinner they mysteriously didn't respond. Maybe they did a little internet research? I'm not sure, but it just ended up meaning more for me!