A biscuit is one of the world’s great road-trip foods. It’s fast to make and eat, portable, good hot or cold, and can swing savory or sweet. You can use it for a sandwich or to round out a bowl of chili or piece of chicken. Which is why it’s so difficult to understand why there are so many truly awful biscuits out there.

Take McDonald’s, for instance—consistency is one thing, but why do they make things so complicated? Their biscuit is an ungodly blend of 47 ingredients, including high-fructose corn syrup, soy lecithin, liquid margarine, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, cottonseed oil, sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate (preservatives), and both natural (why bother?) and artificial flavors.

Nowadays, even the most down-home roadside diners tend to rely on a commercial mix. The dispiriting results can be overly salty or have a chemical aftertaste that likely comes from too much double-acting baking powder. In texture, they can be flabby or too fluffy. There’s no there there.

And that is why, on our annual drive to a North Carolina beach, we often take a round-about route that allows us to visit friends along the way—and grab a quick meal at Biscuitville. The fast-food chain was started back in 1975 by Maurice Jennings, a flour broker in Danville, Virginia. Today, Maurice’s son, Burney Jennings, heads up some 50 restaurants in Virginia and North Carolina.

Biscuitville biscuits are made fresh (every 20 minutes) from scratch using simple, wholesome ingredients. The ladies who see to the biscuits are simultaneously brisk and gentle: They knead and roll as little as possible, and when they stamp out rounds of dough, they never, ever twist the cutter, pinching the edges together and thus inhibiting the rise. In their own meditative world, they hardly ever look up, even when kids press their noses against the glass.

The Biscuitville menu boasts a dizzying array of sandwiches, including sausage, smoked sausage, turkey sausage, bacon, ham, gravy, steak, pork chop, bologna, and chicken three ways—fried, grilled, or spicy. Eggs and/or cheese are common embellishments.

Personally, I like a plain sausage biscuit, without any distractions. But on this trip, I was intrigued by the special the company had just rolled out: a pimento cheese and bacon biscuit. Sam wasn’t surprised when I ordered both—research, you know—but he was when I ate every last crumb. “How can you eat mayonnaise so early in the day?” he asked. “Tell me you’re not going to lick the paper.”

Biscuits, of course, are so simple to make at home you won’t believe it. The recipe I use is that of southern chef Scott Peacock. He is constantly tweaking and finessing, and you’ll find a recent version (including directions for his homemade baking powder, which takes three minutes) in the April issue of Martha Stewart Living under the rubric “One Perfect Thing.” We weren’t exaggerating.

And how. Happy Fourth, and see you in a few weeks.

Meanwhile, poke around in the archives if so inclined. You will find summer squash, a Cool ‘o the Evening cocktail, the localest shrimp, what to do with an extravagance of sour cherries, and more. Personally, I am long overdue for a root-beer float and my first taste of snap beans.

Hello, summer.

Good cookbooks are soothing and aspirational all at once. They fall squarely in the “I can dream can’t I?” department, which must be why many people like to read them before they go to bed. I used to be one of them.

A few years ago, though, I branched out with an evocative, beautifully illustrated history of English kitchen gardening that I’d picked up at a library book sale. Before long, I found myself absorbed in Agricultural News, published by the Cornell University Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County. My husband, Sam, is a pastry chef turned horticulturalist who works out on Long Island, and I thought it would be nice if I had a handle on late blight, root rot, downy mildew, and the monthly “Weed of Interest” (for June, it’s the promiscuous yellow nutsedge, which can produce almost 7,000 offspring from a single plant in a single season). And I like learning, for instance, that there is such a thing as the Long Island Cauliflower Association, and that plants seldom damaged by deer include spicebush, sea buckthorn, and a tree called the Carolina silverbell, which is as pretty as it sounds.

This spring, I read my way through the inaugural issue of Modern Farmer, an elegant, ambitious print quarterly that is lightyears removed from trade publications, let alone The Modern Farmer, a 1960s television show that appeared at dawn on Saturday mornings. I was always up with the birds, too, and found the livestock reports far more interesting than my weekly visit with Mr. Green Jeans, on Captain Kangaroo an hour or so later.

Today’s Modern Farmer is published in Hudson, New York, by a sophisticated crew headed by founder and editor in chief Ann Marie Gardner, former editor at T: Travel The New York Times Magazine and founding editor of Monocle. I was relieved to find not yet another hyper-local magazine devoted to celebrating worthy producers or Brooklyn hipsters who think they’ve invented beekeeping, but a point of view that’s broad without being watered down.

I fit neatly into the mag’s target audience, but more importantly, it makes me realize just how far the food world has come since 1999, when I attended the first Joe Baum forum on Sustainable Cuisine, hosted by the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park. I was there with two colleagues from Gourmet, and we represented the only food magazine at the conference. The next year, what came to be our annual produce issue hit the newsstand, opening the door for definitive stories on slave labor in Florida tomato fields, the struggles of American shrimpers, industrial chicken slaughter, the inhumane treatment of Kobe beef cattle, and the push-me-pull-you politics of scientific research. Here’s hoping Modern Farmer will up the ante.

A must-read for anyone who cultivates a farm fantasy or simply wants to grow stuff sustainably is Storey’s Guide to Growing Organic Vegetables & Herbs for Market, by Keith Stewart, a certified-organic farmer in the Hudson Valley whose first book, It’s a Long Road to a Tomato, chronicled his escape from a stifling city job to a rural, far more productive life. Keith’s rocambole garlic, lettuces, tomatoes, potatoes, squashes, pot greens, and celery roots are reason alone to frequent the Union Square Greenmarket, and I have a clearer idea of why his vegetables are so stellar after reading the Storey’s Guide. At 500-plus pages, it covers everything from how to buy good land and map fields to overall business smarts and a chapter called “Looking After Number One,” a frank discussion of how to keep physically, mentally, and emotionally healthy.

The insights into the time and labor involved are worth sharing with anyone who questions the expense of quality produce. In Chapter 13,”Our Most Profitable Crops,” Keith described why and how he grows peas with edible pods. “We grow sugar snap and snow peas because they come in early when there’s not much else around. They taste good, fetch a good price, and fix atmospheric nitrogen, but their season is relatively short, and they require a fair bit of work in terms of trellising and picking.”

Yep. “We’ve used a few different trellis products on the market,” Keith wrote. “All of them require that stakes be set firmly in the ground every 6 feet of so. Some peas can grow to a height of 6 feet or more and become quite heavy; they need substantial support. The trellises and stakes are costly, and this is one of the reasons we seldom grow more than 1,000 row feet of peas a year. Once the plants stop producing, we must dismantle the trellis system and remove the vines.” I felt tired just thinking about all the effort implicit in that last, laconic sentence, and that night I fell asleep figuring out just how many stakes it would take to plant 1,000 row feet of needy peas.

Taking care of plants so that they will take care of us is also the message in The Four Season Farm Gardener’s Cookbook, by Barbara Damrosch and Eliot Coleman, whose Four Season Farm, in Harborside, Maine, is an enduring example of small-scale, sustainable market gardening practiced year round. The book, which is full of photos of the couple’s home garden, is divided into two sections—a nicely detailed, easy-to-follow guide for plots big and small and a collection of 120 simple, appealing recipes. Field observations and nuggets of kitchen wisdom scattered throughout allow a relaxed, natural progression from growing what you eat to cooking what you grow.

Yesterday evening, when it was still hotter than all-get-out, the hednote for Barbara’s green gazpacho caught my eye. “It’s ideal for the early part of summer, when you crave a cold vegetable soup, but neither the tomatoes nor the peppers have ripened to red yet. Serve it with a platter of sandwiches ….”

Just reading the list of ingredients—green bell pepper, jalapeño, cucumber, celery, scallions, parsley, cilantro, lime—made me feel cooler, and Keith’s spring onions  proved an able stand-in for the scallions. By the time I’d whizzed up the soup in the blender, Sam had pulled leftover roast chicken out the fridge and put together sandwiches with Duke’s mayo and plenty of salt and pepper. After supper, Sam dug through his tote bag. “I almost forgot I brought you a present,” he said. “A back issue of something called Acres U.S.A. Ever hear of it?”

“There’s never too much June,” my mother would declare this time of year. No kidding. After a long, cold spring (on May 28, Climate Central tweeted there had been more daily record lows by that date than in all of 2012), kitchen and market gardeners are racing to catch up to the calendar. And, at last, there is something ripening every time you turn around.

Take sugar snap peas, for instance. The plump, edible pods occupy such a small window of opportunity, you’d better act fast: Once the heat sets in, say good-bye until next year. You don’t have to do much to sugar snaps in the kitchen, but you do need to string them beforehand. Nick the stem end of each pod with a paring knife or finger nail, then zip the fibrous string down along the pod’s inner curve. It’s a good idea to remove the filament along the outer curve, too; it’s thinner, but can be surprisingly tough.

The other evening, I brought a bowl of the (rinsed) peas to the table for stringing; Sam sat down to help, and we ended up eating them out of hand for a first course. There were just enough left to add color, crunch, and freshness to a cobbled-together farro salad. Sugar snaps are also lovely stir-fried with very young pea shoots, garlic, and ginger, or simply sautéed in a little water and butter. By the time the water is evaporated—three minutes, say—the snaps are just tender.

A ready supple of fresh green herbs at the Union Square Greenmarket means that we concoct salad dressings as we need them throughout the week. Recently, I’ve been enamored of garlic chives; those and a dab of shiro (white) miso or Asian fish sauce turn a basic vinaigrette into something I could eat on cornflakes. Nancy Baggett wrote in to say she stuffed handfuls of garlic chives into vinegar, which sounds like the ultimate garlicky-oniony condiment to me. I keep meaning to infuse vinegar with the blossoms of garden-variety chives, but all I ever really do is put a bouquet of them in a small silver vase.

Common thyme, Thymus vulgaris, is probably the herb I rely on the most. A sheet pan of salt-and-peppered chicken thighs almost never goes into our oven without a scattering of thyme sprigs, and if you start off a seat-of-the-pants stew by gently cooking carrot, onion, celery, a bay leaf, and fresh thyme, you can’t go too far wrong. And for a quick weeknight meal, I like to roughly chop the leaves and toss them with other tender herbs, good olive oil, and shallots in a bowl, then stir in hot cooked pasta (don’t drain too thoroughly).

When thyme is in bloom, it’s particularly sweet, and I’m always reminded of the honey I first tasted in Haute Provence. There, I also learned to chop the thyme and its flowers, along with savory and marjoram, then work that heady blend into some olive oil and pour the whole business over fresh goat cheese. It’s happy to sit there and marinate while you slice some good bread and open a bottle of wine.

One of my go-to vegetables for the past couple of weeks has been green, or spring, onions. Keith Stewart and other farmers plant sets of the baby alliums in the soil as soon as it can be worked; those itty-bitties grow faster than onions planted from seed, and are ready for market in early June.

The chopped bulbs are delicious when sautéed and heaped on a steak or burger, or added to a frittata. This year, though, I’ve been roasting them whole, and I feel like I’ve discovered an entirely new vegetable. They are staggeringly simple to prepare: Whack off the root end and a few inches of the lanky tops. Discard any battered leaves and peel off the tough outer layer or two from the bulbs. Toss with olive oil, season with salt, and roast at 400° (turn them once, if you think about it) until caramelized and tender but still juicy, about 20 minutes.

Given the rain and lingering cool weather, the strawberries—one of the most fragile of fruits—are better than they have any right to be. The ones above, from Stokes Farm, had gotten just enough sunny warmth to scent the air, and their flavor was surprisingly full and rich. I ate the pint I bought on the way home.

There is never too much June.

I may live in New York City, but I don’t much care for crowds, which is why you will never find me at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, the lighting of the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center, the Belmont Stakes, or any concert any time in Central Park. That’s what television is for.

But I do make an exception for the Big Apple Barbecue Block Party, which took over Madison Square Park and the surrounding streets this past Saturday and Sunday. Perhaps it’s because I was there for its debut, on a rainy—okay, teeming—June weekend in 2003. Or because even though the event has grown like gangbusters since then, it still feels neighborly.

Then again, it could be the quick, cadenced thunka-thunka-thunka of a virtuoso chopper turning a whole hog into the ultimate blend of fat and lean in the middle of Manhattan that makes me feel at one with the universe. Especially when the background hullabaloo eventually resolves itself into colorful Festival of India parade floats and beaming Hare Krishnas. “You need vegetarian food?” someone asked. “Come down to Washington Square!”

Tempting, but no thanks. I’d skipped breakfast so I would be ready for an early lunch— a chopped-pork sandwich from the Skyline Inn (Ayden, North Carolina), where Sam Jones is upholding the family tradition (since 1830) of wood-cooked whole-hog barbecue. I haven’t made a pilgrimage to Skyline for ages, so I was delighted that Sam had made the trek north.

This was his first visit to the BABBP (so much faster to type), and I sure hope he plans on coming back. Like all great eastern North Carolina–style barbecue sandwiches, Skyline’s is unapologetically plain: just that chopped whole hog topped with a delicate, fresh-tasting coleslaw and served on a bun. The meat is cooked long, low, and slow until it passes tender to become lush, almost creamy. It’s chopped to pieces, judiciously larded with bits of crisp, salty skin, and then seasoned lightly—some would say austerely—with a thin, vinegar-based sauce. Heaven.

A few days later, I’m still recovering from a pork hangover, but it was worth it. Why hold back? After all, there was Mike Mills, from 17th Street Bar & Grill (Murphysboro, Illinois), with his prize-winning baby backs (“If it was easy, everybody would be doing it”). Covered with an outer layer of spicy, crisp-tender  “bark,” these are the  gold standard of ribdom, and the baked beans—all too often a throw-away side—are superb. The fact that 17th Street delivers nationwide is enough to make me rethink a forthcoming dinner party or two.

As always, North Carolina pit master Ed Mitchell supplied gravitas in more ways than one—his thick pork sandwich and generous heap of long, crisp shreds of coleslaw (really more of a vegetable side than condiment) caused its cardboard tray to buckle. Too massive to eat on the sidewalk, Ed’s sandwich was the reason I’d packed a ziplock bag or two and carried a tote. That evening, my husband was over the moon.

What were some other highlights? Well, I swung by BlackJack Barbecue, up from Charleston, for some mustardy South Carolina ‘cue. Jimmy Hagood and his crew were busy tending the cooker; by the end of the weekend, I heard they’d smoked 3,000 pounds of pork butts. Kenny Callaghan, from Blue Smoke, did New York proud …. And the juicy smoked pork hot links, offset by Saltines and a dollop of pimento cheese (a piquant, refreshing embellishment), from Jim ‘n Nick’s Community Bar-B-Q, in Birmingham, hit the spot.

The BABBP, by the way, is the genius child of restaurateur Danny Meyer, who, back in 2003, wanted “to promote the cultural value of American Barbecue.” Danny and his Union Square Hospitality Group, Blue Smoke restaurant, and the Jazz Standard jazz club (as well as presenting sponsor Southern Living magazine) continue to wrangle almost 20 pit masters (this year, from Alabama, the Carolinas, Illinois, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas), coordinating big rigs, cookers with smokestacks, musical performances, and free seminars with aplomb. Their ongoing support of the Madison Square Park Conservancy is one reason the little park—when not dense with tailgaters and eau de woodsmoke—looks like Paris. I never fail to appreciate this; when I first moved to New York, you couldn’t walk through Madison Square, day or night, without being mugged or worse.

I ended my binge at the turf staked out by Scott’s Bar-B-Que, from Hemingway, South Carolina, which is right near Myrtle Beach. No surprise, then, that Rodney Scott‘s swagger and savoir-faire always seem to create a party within a party (click here for his BBQ mix tape, courtesy of Garden & Gun magazine). That’s a splayed whole hog you’re looking at below, ready to be mopped with a pungent barbecue sauce. It was cooked spoon-tender—à la cuillère—and served on a slice of white bread. More heaven.

I came to rhubarb relatively late in life. It’s not something I grew up with, and a few slices of generically sweet strawberry-rhubarb pie (and one brief encounter with a slithery compote) left me, shall I say, underwhelmed. That is, until about five years ago, when gardening friends from Edinburgh taught me a thing or two about this bracingly tart vegetable (it’s in the same botanical family as sorrel and buckwheat) that’s treated like a fruit.

Rheum rhabarbarum‘s traditional role was medicinal, they explained. The dried root was a popular general tonic for centuries. Native to western China, it was shipped by caravan through Russia to Europe, where it commanded prices higher than those of cinnamon or opium.

The notion of using rhubarb stalks in cooking also came from Asia, but it didn’t catch on in Europe until the early 19th century. According to a 1991 piece by Clifford M. Foust and Dale E. Marshall in Hortscience, a nurseryman named Joseph Myatt, of south London, brought rhubarb to the Covent Garden market in 1808 or 1809. Myatt’s cultivar ‘Victoria,’ introduced in 1837 and prized for its fat, tangy stalks, remains a kitchen-garden favorite in both Britain and the United States.

According to Foust and Marshall, rhubarb’s production in the winter months, when little fresh produce was available, was the result of a happy accident. “The forcing of rhubarb roots was inadvertently discovered in 1815, when earth thrown up by the digging of a ditch in Chelsea Physic Garden covered dormant rhubarb crowns,” they wrote. “Within a few weeks, succulent rhubarb shoots with eye-catching petioles but strangely retarded leaves pushed through the moist, warm mulch in midwinter, long before field rhubarb was due to appear.” Throw in the heavy marketing of produce, especially in London, at that time, and the concurrent rise of sugar production in the Caribbean (making that sweetener more affordable) and British Rhubarb Mania was born.

My friends introduced me to rhubarb fool and rhubarb oatmeal crumble, both of which had undeniable charm. But I wasn’t truly captivated until rhubarb’s tartness, creamed into an applesauce-like purée, was paired with a rich pork roast.

This week’s abundance of rhubarb at the Union Square market put me in mind of that particular dinner party, so I scooped up a bundle, and, shortly thereafter, two thick, well-marbled heritage pork chops. Dinner was under control.

You’ll find the recipe below more of a guideline than anything, and that’s all you really need. Much depends on whether your rhubarb is hothouse- or field-grown and how acidic and/or juicy it is. I basically seasoned to taste, trying to complement the tartness, not trample it.

A few market & kitchen notes: Stalk color can range from red to green; I’d always presumed that the red cultivars were sweeter, but that’s not the case. No matter what variety you find, choose stalks that are crisp and glossy; if they look fibrous, string them like you would celery. In general, field-grown rhubarb is firmer, juicier, and more intensely colored; the hothouse kind is milder and more tender. And because the leaves have a high concentration of oxalic acid, never, ever eat them, whether cooked or raw.

Rhubarb Sauce

I served this with meaty bone-in pork chops, but it would be delicious with duck, too. Next time, I may toss a star anise pod or two into the pot before simmering and see what happens.

About 1 pound rhubarb, trimmed and sliced crosswise

1 to 2 tablespoons sugar, plus more for seasoning

Juice from 1 small orange

Ground cinnamon or allspice

Coarse salt

1. Put the rhubarb into a nonreactive saucepan (i.e., one that’s stainless steel or enameled cast iron), and add the sugar and orange juice. Bring everything to a boil, then reduce to a gentle simmer and cook until the rhubarb is beyond stewed; it must be very soft. Depending on how juicy your orange is (I forgot to measure), you may need to add a little water.

2. Transfer the mixture to a food processor or a blender and purée until it’s the consistency you like. Season to taste with sugar, a pinch of cinnamon or allspice, and salt.

When: Saturday, May 25, at the start of the long Memorial Day weekend. Where: Whole Foods, Union Square. Eddy, my favorite man behind the meat counter, threw a doleful glance at his array of kebabs, steaks, and ribs. “It’s too cold and rainy to cook out,” he said. “So far, everybody’s been asking for meatloaf mix and pot roasts.” Hmm. I snagged some top blade steaks—they cook in minutes under the broiler—and sidled over to the fish counter.

Although I couldn’t face a beef chuck roast or other braising cut, and we’d made  meatloaf the week before, something hearty and warming was definitely called for. Clam chowder, maybe? There were no big, meaty quahogs to be found, but there was some pretty cod from Iceland. That fishery does have some issues, but according to Monterey Bay’s Seafood Watch iPhone app (it’s free! download here), it’s still a “best choice” if hook-and-line-caught. For now, the cod stocks around Iceland are in better shape than the collapsed fisheries in the western Atlantic. As you may know, the situation there is dire.

Still, these fillets were bright, translucent, and smelled of the ocean—in other words, they practically whispered “buy me.” I fell hard, especially when I recollected a recipe from Heston Blumenthal, the chef-owner-gastrowizard at The Fat Duck, in Berkshire, England. As far as cookbooks go, he’s best known for the stunning Fat Duck Cookbook (Bloomsbury, 2008), but the one that’s dearest to my heart is his first, called Family Food: A New Approach to Cooking and written for home cooks who want to introduce their children to the kitchen. Blumenthal is the father of three, and his voice is so genuine and down-to-earth, the book is a great pleasure to read, whether or not you have kids. “Take your children around a supermarket, greengrocer, farmers’ market, or farm shop,” he writes. “Ask the fishmonger to show them how to recognize fresh fish. They will be more likely to listen to him (no offence!).”

I came by a new Penguin edition of the book in 2004, when the poet and writer Cynthia Zarin reviewed it for Gourmet. We squeezed in one of the recipes—pot-roast cod—with some notes to help out American cooks. It’s a terrific (and quick-cooking) one-pot wonder, just right for a chilly, rainy spring evening.

Pot-Roast Cod

Serves 4

Adapted from Family Food: A New Approach to Cooking by Heston Blumenthal with an assist from Gourmet

When I put this together, I came up a bit short in the onion department, so I supplemented with part of a fennel bulb that was kicking around in the fridge. Not exactly a Blumenthal-caliber innovation, but it sure was good.

1 pound small potatoes

4 bacon slices

1 pound onions, thinly sliced

4 garlic cloves, chopped

1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme

1¼ pounds cod fillet (¾ inch thick)

¼ cup dry white wine or vermouth

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

1. Put the potatoes in a pot and cover with about 2 inches cold water. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat, and simmer until barely tender when pierced with a fork; drain. (They’ll finish cooking in the oven.)

2. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 325°. Working on the stovetop, cook the bacon until crisp in a large ovenproof heavy skillet (cast-iron is ideal). Drain the bacon on a paper towel–lined plate and when it’s cool, roughly chop.

3. Cook the onions and garlic in the bacon drippings until softened and a little browned; stir in the thyme. Add the cod and potatoes, cover the skillet, and transfer to the oven. Cook 15 to 20 minutes, until it’s done. (How do you tell? Cut into the fillet with a paring knife and take a look: it should be just opaque.)

4. Transfer the cod to a warm plate and add the wine and butter to the skillet. (If the mixture is a little dry, add a splash of water.) Cook, stirring, over medium-high heat a few minutes to deglaze the pan and make a sauce. Place the cod on top, scatter with bacon, and serve at the table.

I cantered around the Union Square market on Saturday like I was warming up for the Preakness. I came to a screeching halt, though, at the tented tables staffed by Lani’s Farm, from south Jersey. Something smelled really, really good. Sure enough, I found Eugena Yoo (who manages the farm with her brother, Steve Yoo) behind a hot plate, making what seemed to be a big, thin crêpe. “What is that?” asked someone in the interested knot of people around her. “Garlic chive pancake,” she replied. “Just flour and water, a little salt ….” She held up the pancake and started cutting it into pieces with scissors. Everyone else hung around for a taste, but I wasn’t born yesterday. I grabbed a few bundles of the chives and made it to the cash register before it was mobbed.

Garlic chives (aka Chinese chives, gul choy, gao choy, and Allium tuberosum) are native to central and northern Asia. Unlike “regular” chives, which are tubular, garlic chives are flat. Most often, you’ll see green ones, like those above, but sometimes they come topped with small buds or they are blanched—that is, grown under cover—so that they’re a delicate, expensive pale yellow.

Green garlic chives are what you use to season a new carbon-steel wok (“Nothing removes that metallic taste like Chinese chives,” stir-frying authority Grace Young once told me), and they’re popular in stir-fries and noodle soups. Cooking them any which way, in fact, mutes their garlicky edge and reveals a tender, vegetal sweetness. Steamed or sautéed and sauced with gingered butter, garlic chives make a quick side for seared scallops or fish. They are also lovely in an omelet or soft-scrambled eggs, and a smear of the Korean chile paste gochujang—one of my all-time favorite condiments—takes things right over the top.

Now, about chive pancakes. By the time I got home from the farmers market, I was starving and not in the mood to crack open a cookbook, let alone get sucked into a recipe search online. So I washed a handful of the chives, patted them dry, and cut them into pieces about two inches long. Then I stirred together a half cup flour and a half cup cold water, pressing out any lumps, just until it was smooth, and folded in some of the chives. I skim-coated a nonstick skillet with safflower oil, and when it was hot, poured in some batter and spread it as thin as possible (note to self: spread faster next time).

Drat! I’d forgotten the salt, so sprinkled some on top of the pancake. After about two minutes, I peeked at the underside, which was turning golden brown. I gave it another 30 seconds or so to get good and crisp around the edges and turned it over with my fingers. I added a smidgen more oil and waited a few more minutes, pressing every so often with a spatula so that the other side browned evenly. The kitchen smelled delicious.

Well, my pancake wasn’t as thin or as big as Eugena’s was, but not too shabby for a first try. While the second one was working, I dug the gochujang out of the fridge. And then I ate breakfast standing over the stove.

There aren’t enough hours in the day or enough days in the week, it seems, but that’s life. What keeps things on track in the kitchen are things I can make quickly, with little effort yet a big payoff. The simmered asparagus I wrote about last week is one example, and another is glazed carrots. They are delicious plain (funny how butter does that) with a piece of pan-seared or broiled fish—or just about anything, really.

If you’re in the mood to tinker and tweak, though, know that carrots have a great affinity for Middle Eastern flavors. Sprinkle them with a blend of ground toasted cumin and coriander seeds, ground cinnamon, and cayenne or Turkish maras or urfa pepper flakes. We had them that way tonight, with couscous and roasted salt-and-peppered chicken thighs. If you turn on the oven before you take off your jacket (it’s still so chilly!), you will have supper ready in practically no time.

Glazed Carrots

If the carrots are young and on the small side, cut them in half lengthwise; otherwise cut them into thin rounds. Put them in a heavy pan with a little water. Sprinkle with a teaspoonful of sugar or honey, top with nice-sized chunks of butter, and cover the pan. Cook over medium-low heat until water is evaporated and carrots are tender, 10 to 15 minutes. Uncover and increase the heat to medium-high; cook, tossing occasionally, until carrots are glazed, a few minutes more.

I busted loose at the Union Square market this week. Lilacs. Crabapple blossoms. Buttercups, one of the world’s most joyful flowers. And the first local asparagus, which was mesmerizing. The California stuff I picked up at Easter was perfectly fine, but not in the same league at all.

James Beard wrote about the first stalks of the season in American Cookery (1972): “Its fresh, pungent flavor never seems to pall. Do not plan to serve it sparingly.” I couldn’t agree more. I bought a few bundles from Stokes Farm (above). The fat, juicy-looking spears, tightly budded at the top, were impossible to resist.

I made my way around the square, picking up eggs, milk, radishes, greens, and slender bulbs of spring shallots. It was a slow process—on such a fine May morning, everyone was on the prowl. At Cherry Lane’s stand, another customer peered into my market bag as I stowed more asparagus. “Having a dinner party?” she asked. “Nope,” I replied. “My husband and I are going to eat it all by ourselves.”

We didn’t waste any time. While I dealt with the flowers, Sam got busy at the stove and soon we sat down and dipped crisp-tender asparagus into soft-boiled eggs. Then we folded up the leftover spears in hot buttered toast and ate those over the sink.

As far as cooking goes, we like to keep it simple. Just put the asparagus in a large skillet and barely cover with cold water. Bring to a boil and season with salt. Reduce the heat and simmer the asparagus, uncovered, until barely tender. Early that evening, we cooked another batch and enjoyed it cool, with a vinaigrette made with a couple of shallot bulbs. I barely had room for any roast chicken.

The next night, we ate our asparagus warm, with brown butter. I had also hottened up the leftover chicken and a thin shingle of country ham, but I don’t know why I bothered. Asparagus is the crack cocaine of the vegetable world.

And there will be more next week.