I had to miss the first two Saturdays of the 2007 Lexington Farmers Market season because of a trip and a heel injury, but today I finally got there. On crutches, and limited in what I could carry, but definitely there.

I had heard about the new vendors who are growing Lions Mane mushrooms. I bought a half-pound mushroom that looked a lot like a small cauliflower covered with white tendrils instead of curlicues. I also bought half a pound of velvety grey oyster mushrooms.

I sauteed the two types of mushrooms in separate pans to top our own greens in the first Saturday Farmers Market lunch of the season. I followed the Lisle V. Roberts (Dad) theory that anything you cook in browned butter will taste good. Dad developed that theory during the couple of years Mother became an avid mushroom forager and tester in beautiful Wayne County.

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Asparagus Day One came scarily early in the middle of March, in the middle of a torrid 10-day summer that bloomed out all things at once. The combination of beauty — redbuds/iris/daffodils/tulips/dogwoods/apples/weeping cherries/peach/crabapples/lilacs/viburnum/pansies and who knows what all in bloom at the same time — and certain death-by-freezing could not be resisted.

After the inevitable April freeze, the asparagus stopped coming for at least two weeks. But this week, April 24, to be exact, a wonderful thing happened in our kitchen: Salad made of a peppery baby mesclun mix plus lots of added baby arugula, vinaigrette, asparagus on top. An entire salad bowl of food from our garden, if we ignore the vinaigrette.

But the vinaigrette made the whole thing spectacular. Three tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, one tablespoon red wine vinegar, Dijon mustard (about a thumb’s width on a table knife blade, as prescribed in James and Kay Salter’s book, Life is Meals), kosher salt, black pepper. I said to the man at my left, my beloved companion in dining and in life, “I can’t imagine anything in the world that would taste better than this.”

We had a grand time eating Sunday brunch at the Colorado Kitchen when we were in Washington, D.C. last week. I wrote about the doughnuts as part of my story for the May issue of Nougat Magazine.
This small, bright, quirky place is more than five years old and still drawing crowds and accolades.

See recent reviews in The Washingtonian, Voice, and Yelp. Not bad for a place where the chef, Gillian Clark, has stood up for Chef’s Rights — or for chefs being right — about their sides and combos. Even NPR picked up on the controversy.

My own thoughts: Gillian Clark cooks so beautifully and works so hard she gets to say whatever she wants. If we don’t like it, we can eat somewhere else. Me - I like the place. I think I like Gillian Clark, after watching her cook for a full crowd last Sunday. I’d like to eat dinner at the Colorado Kitchen, and see how the southern-fresh-European-finely prepared sensibility translates.