When we told the uninitiated that we were going to attend a “ramp dinner” in West Virginia a few weeks ago, they looked at us funny. “How can you make a dinner out of a ramp?” my husband asked, thinking of those slanty metal things that you use as an alternative to stairs.
Ramps, for those of you who also don’t know, are a type of wild leek found in the hills of Appalachia, in some of the same places you find ginseng. They are not worth as much money, but they are tasty and becoming a delicacy that fetch fancy prices in gourmet circles. But for most West Virginia’s, they are just an edible sign of spring and a way for some local organizations to stage a fundraiser.
My intrepid fellow traveler, Arlene, and I set off on a rainy Sunday morning from my house in Arlington, VA, speeding toward Bomont, West Virginia to make it to the ramp dinner at the H.E. White Elementary School before all the food ran out. When we pulled up in our rented VW bug convertible (it was the only compact car the rental agency had left), there were hardly any parking spaces left in and around the school. We knew we were in the right place, because: 1. Bomont is a very small, 2. There was a very large “Ramp Dinner” sign attached to the chain link fence of the school’s playground.
We payed our $10 and got in line for our ramp feast: ramps sauteed in bacon fat, ramps in fried potatoes, and a host of accompaniments, washed down with sweet or unsweet sassafras tea. We chatted up some locals, and soon our friend and colleague, Emily, who lives and works in Charleston, joined us. (Read more about her in my entry on Helvetia.)
We were in ramp heaven! Since we were going to be traveling around WV for the next few days, we were not tempted to bid on the leftover raw ramps which got auctioned off toward the end of the dinner. But, later in the trip, near Elkins, we did come across a large sign along the highway, outside an outdoor store: “Ramps Now Available.” Arlene doubted that they meant the edible kind, but we turned around to investigate anyhow. There, in the glass-fronted refrigerator in the corner, were plastic garbage bags full of the kind of ramps we still craved and wanted to try cooking ourselves.
In downtown Elkins, we noticed more ramp evidence on several t-shirts on display or offered for sale at some of the shops, one stating that “ramps don’t smell, people do.” As we had found out from eating big helpings in Bomont, ramps do cause you to – how do I say this delicately? – emit smelly fumes after their consumption.
Regardless, we highly recommend them. I sauteed mine in butter, not being a really big bacon fat fan, and scrambled some of them with eggs. Yum. Also, thanks to Marion Harless the “herbarist” we visited and interviewed before returning home, I learned the rudiments of planting the bulbs, which are now safely nestled under shrubs in my backyard. Tune in a couple of years from now to see if the ramp saga continues on home turf.
