Ramps are common to New England as well, and locals have been eating them for centuries (probably millennia). I will admit, though, that we don’t have festivals for them as far as I am aware. So that’s maybe an Appalachian peculiarity. 
I cashier in a store owned by Orthodox Jewish people in an area with a large Jewish population. This is our biggest time of year: People buying paper and plastic dinnerware and all new kitchenware for the Passover season. We ring up orders of $300 - $400 every day, and the record (held by me!) is $997 of tableware, kitchenware and kosher for Passover food.
It’s mind boggling.
What is a ramp?
It’s certainly not the Official Jewish Explanation of the Reasoning Behind the Law, but I’ve long been partial to the work of “Cultural Materialist” Anthropologist Marvin Harris, who has set down his CM explanations for dietary laws around the world, including the Jewish ones, in his books Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches, The Sacred Cow and the Abominable Pig (AKA Good to Eat), Our Kind, Cultural Materialism, and others. In his explanations, there is some practical reason behind the prohibitions, possibly an “economic” one. Later philosophizing about long-established rules then leads to rationalization centered around some other explanation.
Harris’ explanation about not eating pig, for instance (which isn’t strictly a Jewish taboo, but is also observed by Muslims and was in the past observed by the ancient Egyptians and Sumerians) is that, although pigs quickly put on weight and can be rapidly raised and slaughtered, they also compete with people for food. You can feed cows, goats, and sheep on grass and other plants that people can’t digest, but pigs don’t eat grass – they eat plant food that people can eat. In addition, pigs require the proper environment and keeping. In a subsistence economy, with everyone just above starvation, pigs are a luxury. Nevertheless, they’re an attractive luxury. If pig meat weren’t seductive, but was instead disgusting, there’d be no need for a rule prohibiting it – people wouldn’t be tempted. The existence of the law implies that people would be tempted.
In Polynesia, where there are few large native animals, and where the wild pigs feed themselves and aren’t domesticated, prohibiting the eating of pig would have been insane. In fact, in some places there consumption of pig was practically a religious ceremony. Similarly, 19th century America was famous (or notorious) for widespread eating of pigs. But pigs could be fattened for market quickly on surplus corn that people didn’t need. In fact, feeding the corn to pigs, then walking them to market was the most efficient way to sell the nutrition in the corn.
Basically wild onions.
“ramp” is the same as “rampion”, which, as I learned from Fractured Fairy Tales, is the same as Rapunzel.
Maybe this is why they stuck her way up in a tall tower.
They’re both oniony and garlicky in flavor and kind of tangy in a way that domesticated onion varieties don’t seem to be. They’re some of the first greens to appear in the spring and act as a beacon of hope that warm weather is on its way.
They’re also wild foraged food. They need to be harvested in a specific way to avoid decimating a patch - they are very slow to reproduce and spread, so you have to leave the root end of the bulb in place. Preferably harvesting only leaves, leaving the bulb + one leaf in place. For this and other reasons they are not possible to cultivate on a commercial scale.
Annie-XMas:
Amazing Savings?
Their newfound popularity with foodies is raising forage to unsustainable levels. When I was younger, they were literally everywhere. In the last decade, there are almost none in easily accessible places anymore. If you’re near a trail, you can forget it. You have to go farther and farther afield. When I was a kid, if you had to buy them, you’d pay a buck for a grocery bag full. Now they go for 20 a pound, absolutely ridiculous prices and that has more amateurs combing the woods and patches getting hit by multiple people, so an acre patch which can withstand maybe a 1/3 harvest is getting hit by five people each taking a third of what remains of the path, so they think it’s sustainable, but really they’re decimating it without realizing it. I keep waiting for hipsters to start liking kale again so we can have some recovery.
It’s a horrible situation.
Yep.
I overheard a discussion at a Jewish school once, one lady said what they did for plates to simplify things was to use one set of plates, but put paper plates on them for each meal and discard the papers after. Since it was the main one for the city I assume students ran the gamut from strictly observant to reformed.
One fellow I worked with had no problem with ordering vegetarian options (i.e. vegetarian wraps) from past food places, the closest you could get to ensuring kosher without being too strict; (After all, the Pita Place is not going to process cheese, beef, bacon, etc. with different utensils, but at least he is not actually intentionally eating inappropriate items) he also declined accepting a debt payment on Saturday, but had no problem coming in to help fix servers - something more essential that could not wait.
My sister’s family has meat and dairy dishwashers.
When they accidentally cook meat in a dairy pot (or vice versa) they give it to us (the pot, not the meat) because we’re much less observant.
Apparently scrolls are kosher: Ezekiel 3:3 and Revelation 10:10
(Although probably particularly nutritious or tasty.)
A rabbi mentioned that his family uses paper plates at Passover.
Earl Snake-Hips Tucker:
The word “kosher” literally means “valid” or “fit for use”. While the most common application of the word is to food, it applies to anything that has certain requirements in Jewish law to be valid.
As an atheist, I tend to look to human reasoning for answers. I’d guess that in those times, a great way to get the people over whom you rule to not do something would be to say that God forbids it. Thus, one should look for reasons the rulers did not want their minions do eat this or that. In the case of four-legged beasts, restricting consumption of all but herding ruminants would have made sense. They can live on what we cannot and are easily manageable. Horses have a lot of that going for them, but they were far too valuable as a means of fast transportation. Likewise, camels were too valuable for pack train. By today’s standards, it would be like eating a fighter jet or 18-wheeler. Swine seem to have been singled out as particularly unclean. My own opinion is that they were characterized that way because they are delicious. If there is a kernel of truth in biblical history, the once nomadic Jews had an extended stay in Egypt. It seems likely that many would have developed a taste for swine flesh during their period of servitude. When that situation ended, their rulers may have wanted to dissuade their constituents from eating pigs because they are not compatible with a nomadic, herding lifestyle and because they compete with us for food. They also kill grasses with their rooting. To feed their taste for pork would have required a greater expenditure of time, effort, and resources than would have been spent on raising cows, sheep, and goats. Why no meat eaters or reptiles? Perhaps someone else can chime in on that.
Bugs, nothing. I witnessed a hen chase and kill a mouse that made the mistake of scuttling across the barn door in front of her. I did not see her consume it because she immediately ran out with the corpse while her buddies were in hot pursuit, wanting a share.
Yeah, I laugh when those Purdue commercials come on the TV talking about raising chickens on a vegetarian diet. Chickens are NOT vegetarians!
No, they’re definitely not. I joined a couple backyard chicken groups on FB and in late November, all the posts are one of two topics:
- “ummm … can I give my chickens the turkey carcass?”
and - “holy shit my chickens decimated that turkey carcass!!!1!”