{"id":512,"date":"2018-06-15T15:17:15","date_gmt":"2018-06-15T14:17:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kleinwolfpeters.com\/blog?p=512"},"modified":"2018-06-18T08:11:53","modified_gmt":"2018-06-18T07:11:53","slug":"the-most-wonderful-time-of-the-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kleinwolfpeters.com\/?p=512&lang=en","title":{"rendered":"The most wonderful time of the year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>By Kristin Fehlauer<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Asparagus season is upon us once again. The English for <em>Asparagus officinalis<\/em> comes to us by way of Medieval Latin\u2019s <em>sparagus<\/em> from the Greek<em> asparagos, <\/em>which may be <a href=\"https:\/\/www.merriam-webster.com\/dictionary\/asparagus\">related<\/a> to the Greek <em>spargan<\/em> (\u201cto swell\u201d). Its German counterpart, Spargel, ultimately derives from the same root, but detoured to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.duden.de\/rechtschreibung\/Spargel\">sparger<\/a> (Late Middle High German) before arriving at its current form.<\/p>\n<p>A few asparagus facts:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Peru is the world\u2019s largest <a href=\"http:\/\/www.worldstopexports.com\/asparagus-exports-by-country\/\">exporter<\/a> of asparagus, with sales of USD 420 million (32.7% of total asparagus exports) in 2016.<\/li>\n<li>The current Guinness World Record for the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guinnessworldrecords.com\/world-records\/longest-asparagus\">longest asparagus<\/a> is held by Harry and Carson Willemse after they presented a stalk measuring 351.7 cm (138.5 in) in 2004.<\/li>\n<li>The vegetable has joined the world of competitive eating: on April 26, 2014, Joey Chestnut <a href=\"http:\/\/www.majorleagueeating.com\/records.php\">ate<\/a> 12 lbs., 8.75 oz. of deep-fried asparagus spears in 10 minutes.<\/li>\n<p>&#038;nbsp<\/ul>\n<p>My favorite thing about asparagus is the seasonality of it. Every spring, we finally have a day where we dare to eat outside again. As we sit outside in the sun, happily munching on some tender shoots in the fresh air, each bite is all the more delicious because we know the experience is only temporary. In just a few weeks, we will have eaten all of this year\u2019s harvest, and Spargel will quietly fade from the grocery store shelves and the restaurants \u2013 before we do the same all over again next year.<\/p>\n<p>Green or white, drizzled with butter or hollandaise, in soup or quiche \u2013 there are a thousand variations of asparagus to sample and savor. How do you like your Spargel?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Everyone in Germany knows what time of year it is. It\u2019s impossible to miss: on restaurant menus, in grocery stores, on magazine covers \u2013 it\u2019s Spargelzeit!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":516,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[156,157,158,159],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kleinwolfpeters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kleinwolfpeters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kleinwolfpeters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kleinwolfpeters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kleinwolfpeters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=512"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kleinwolfpeters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":528,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kleinwolfpeters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512\/revisions\/528"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kleinwolfpeters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kleinwolfpeters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kleinwolfpeters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kleinwolfpeters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}