This year’s final tribute to spring produce brings me to a pungent little perennial that grows wild in eastern North America. Known as a wild leek or ramp, this delicate-looking vegetable possesses small, white bulbs, slender, pink stalks, and broad, green leaves. While this petite plant may appear fragile, the flavor and aroma that it imparts pack powerful punches. Think of the combined bold scents of garlic and onion. Add to these an earthy, lingering aspect and you have the potent smell and taste of a ramp. Wildly popular in the Appalachian region, ramps are heralded for their culinary as well as medicinal uses. In the latter case locals employ them as seasonal tonics to stimulate dormant appetites and open sinuses long blocked by winter’s chill. Beyond their role in folk medicine, ramps star in a series of springtime food festivals held throughout West Virginia. At fairs such as the Feast of Ramson in Richwood, W.Va. they are cooked in bacon fat and served alongside ham, beans, potatoes and cornbread. At the International Ramp Cook-off …

After an endless winter of eating root vegetables and dreaming of lighter cuisine I now am basking in the bounty of spring. So much color, crispness and flavor! So many different seasonal offerings. It’s no wonder that my kitchen counter overflows with the produce of the season. While curved fiddlehead ferns, honeycombed morel mushrooms and ruby red rhubarb may catch my eye, several of the more traditional foods have stolen my heart. My main heartthrob? The plump, piquant lemon. Ever present in the produce aisle, it hits its prime in the springtime. A relative of the lime and citron, the lemon performs multiple roles in the kitchen. Wedges serve as as a garnish for seafood and drinks while the zest acts as a flavor enhancer in stuffing and baked goods. Its juice pumps up the flavor in such fruits as peaches, nectarines, guava and papaya. It also balances out rich sauces and vinaigrettes and works as a preservative and anti-browning agent for fragile foods. Talk about a versatile fruit! Lemons keep at room temperature for …

This Earth Day I’m hitting the farmers’ market. To me, nothing says “green living” or springtime like locally grown food. From familiar spring vegetables such as asparagus and leeks to the rare morel and rhubarb the market provides a wealth of vibrant, flavorful produce for my dinner plate. Of all the vernal offerings the most unusual has to be the fiddlehead fern. Resembling the carved head of a violin, fiddleheads are the unfurled shoots of an ostrich fern. One of the last true wild, foraged foods, they grow in moist woods, floodplains and, in my case, in the damp soil bordering my 19th century farmhouse. When told by a neighbor that the two-inch long, tightly coiled fern leaves tasted like a cross between asparagus, artichokes, and okra, I assumed that he was joking. Making fun of the city slicker, eh? What would he say next? That sautéed maple leaves reminded him of syrup? Skepticism aside, I gave fiddlehead ferns a try. Boiled in lightly salted water for 10 minutes or steamed for 20, they do …