Eats, shoots, and Boppie

Asparagus always makes me think of my grandfather, we called him Boppie. Yep, that's right Boppie, like the big fluffy horseshoe pillow people use to lay their babies on. Well, Boppie was quite the gardener, and when we visited him in Illinois, if we were lucky, it would be asparagus season. Boppie had his garden in the tiny patch of land behind the tiny two story house my mother had grown up in. This was the same place he had burned all of the the "old" furniture from my great grandmother, and great great grandmother's estates in the early 1950's when he got tired of having all of that "old junk" in his garage. At any rate, Boppie would take us out to the garden and we would carefully select only the perfect shoots of asparagus for our grandmother Mimi to cook with our dinner. We were only allowed to have a few stalks of this precious commodity and would never dream of leaving a speck of asparagus on our plate. Today, as I prepared asparagus for my husband Tim and my daughter CarlyAnn I thought of Boppie. As it turns out, for years Tim has only been eating the tips of the asparagus spears I serve him and CarlyAnn will eat everything but the tips of her asparagus. Genius! Today I finally realized that if I just cut their asparagus in half, there would be no waste and more for the rest of us. Tim ate the tips and CarlyAnn ate the rest. Perfection! Something a depression era Illinois haberdashery salesman would appreciate. Thanks Boppie.