Green Garlic Soup and Spring Vegetable Lo Mein

Meal 1: Lo Mein with Pea Shoots, Bok Choi, Asparagus and Garlic Chive, Hot and Sour Soup. 
· Heat the soup on the stove top, gently.
· Heat some oil in a sauté pan – non-stick is easiest. Stir fry the vegetables very quickly 10 – 30 seconds, in batches that never crowd the pan. Allow the pan to regain its heat between batches, and transfer the par cooked batches to the serving plate.
· When the veggies are all par cooked and reserved, re-heat the pan, with oil, and add the noodles. Let them set a moment or two to get that good ‘char’ flavor before stirring them to heat through. Again, work in batches to avoid crowing, and thus cooling, the pan. With the last batch of noodles cooked, add the reserved noodles and veggies and sitr all together and serve.


Meal 2: Green Garlic Soup, Grilled Pita with Hummous, and Escarole Salad 
· Heat the soup on the stove top.
· Warm the pita briefly in the oven or toast it in a hot, dry pan. Dip into the hummus.
· Serve and dress the salad.

 Menu Notes 

 Green garlic is garlic that has grown from last fall’s planted clove, and had not yet formed a head of cloves of its own. The entire plant, at this stage os edible from tip to top and is a very nice accompaniment, oiled and grilled, to a mixed grill platter in the late spring. Pea Shoots are an Asian delicacy, available only one or two weeks a year, and well worth knowing. Seek them especially from the Hmong growers at the market, they understand the crop best. The shoots can be a bit toothsome, so chew carefully and thoughtfully. Which we should do anyway, right?