What's that smell?

Well, somebody’s gotta talk about it, right?  It happens every year; asparagus season arrives, and we’re excited to get this once-a-year delicacy, so we gorge ourselves on steamed asparagus, asparagus soup, grilled asparagus wrapped in bacon, asparagus quiche…..or at least I do, anyway.  And then…we go to the bathroom.  We’ve forgotten about the inevitable result of ingesting large amounts of asparagusic acid (yes, it’s a real thing).  Asparagus pee.  Stinky asparagus pee.

A Google search of “asparagus pee” renders some interesting results.  Apparently, although all of us who eat asparagus expel the stinky sulfur compound in our urine, only about 75% of us possess the gene to be able to smell it.  If you are of the 25% that cannot, consider yourself lucky.  My favorite bit of trivia from my search was a quote from the famous French author Marcel Proust, who declared that asparagus:  “..transforms my chamber-pot into a flask of perfume,” which makes me wonder what else he’d eaten or drunk with his asparagus.

Despite this pesky side effect, I’ve been enjoying this week’s haul from Claybank Farms, three pounds of brilliant green, thin, tender spears of the stuff.  I’ve still not found a way to prepare it so that my 12-year-old finds it palatable, but he did manage to choke down a spear or two. (When I mentioned my research for this blog post, he exclaimed, “that’s why my pee smelled so bad!  Like peanut butter that had been rotting for a thousand years!!”) But my husband and I won’t find it difficult to quickly do away with the three pounds of spring deliciousness.  

Here’s a photo of my favorite way to eat asparagus, the day after it’s been steamed for dinner; I cut the spears into bite-sized pieces, shred some carrots, cut up some grape tomatoes, boil a couple of eggs, and top the thing with a lemon vinaigrette (1 part Maille mustard, 1 part lemon juice, salt, 3-4 parts walnut oil).  Nothing tastes more like the arrival of spring!