Asparagus

Cucina Simpatica (Harper Collins, $25) is a well-thought-out cookbook filled with Italian-inspired dishes that are homey, robust and easy to prepare. They have just enough innovation to give them a contemporary flair without losing their connection with tradition. The authors, Johanne Killeen and George Germon, are the owners of Lucky's and Al Forno, two highly acclaimed restaurants in Providence, R.I. Many of the 135 recipes are for dishes that have helped the two restaurants garner rave reviews.

With spring, it is time to visit the Harrow Inne at Ottsville in Upper Bucks County, a country restaurant that offers a stellar dining experience. The restaurant was opened eight years ago in a 1774 fieldstone building by Marji and Klaus Reinecke, restaurant people who have worked at the nearby Plumsteadville Inn and Conti's Cross Keys, as well as the Dilworthtown Inn. The main dining room has exposed ceiling beams that bear the marks of age, recessed windows with salmon-colored interior shutters, rough-plaster walls with oil paintings in gilt frames and Oriental carpets atop wide-planked floorboards.

I used to buy into the Mother's Day fantasy of breakfast in bed. You know the deal: pot of coffee, muffins or scones, and first crack at the Sunday paper. But no matter how hard I tried to stay in bed, I was out with the kitchen clatter. Not that I was concerned the kitchen would be demolished in my absence, but as a cook I'm often unable to let go. If there's cooking to be done, I want to be there. So my husband and I have compromised. We'll prepare a sumptuous Mother's Day - this year, next Sunday.

A culinary bargain that accompanies the arrival of each summer is a bounty of seasonal produce. Just how to put to good use all that nature provides is aptly addressed in the Farmers Market Cookbook (Chicago Review Press, $9.95). The author of the oversize paperback is food writer Susan F. Carlman, a Midwesterner who appears to be as much at home in the market as she is in the kitchen. Carlman knows her apples and conveys her knowledge in a way that puts the reader aesthetically in touch with the entire food chain.

It takes only a midsummer bite of local corn lathered with melted butter, or a salad of vine-ripened tomatoes topped with good olive oil and fresh basil from the garden, to awaken appreciation of the freshness of seasonal foods. Steven Raichlen, a cookbook author and food writer with roots in classical French cuisine, explores the yearlong harvest in A Celebration of the Seasons (Poseidon Press, $18.95). And he does it by establishing a sensitive rapport with his subject and by presenting easy-to-follow recipes that work.

This week's best food buys have appeal for a variety of tastes and cooking styles, from gourmet to peasant. Fresh asparagus (from $1.29 to $1.99 a pound) and rhubarb ($1.99 a pound), two spring favorites, have their own special appeal, even at these early- season prices. The asparagus is widely available. On the peasant side, green cabbage is being featured at several stores in true St. Patrick's Day tradition. The best sale prices run from the bargain five cents - that's right, just a nickel - a pound at the Roosevelt Boulevard and Bensalem ShopRites to 19 cents a pound at Super Fresh.

"Hmm. I'll have the garlic with garlic," I thought as I arrived for dinner at Pasta Blitz at 2nd and Walnut. A blast of garlic - the Italian equivalent of the Mistral - buffets customers when they open the front door. I immediately wondered how diners who were ready for dessert felt about being surrounded by it. But Pasta Blitz isn't a Garlic Blitz, nor is it all pasta, though there are 41 pasta dishes on the dinner menu. Most of what we sampled was seasoned with restraint.

ALTHOUGH THE thermometer doesn't always show it, in just three weeks, the calendar will say it's spring. The warm-up certainly will be welcome, but for anyone who likes to keep his or her cooking fresh, local and seasonal, the full bounty is more than a month away. That's when the first major area crops will begin to sprout in stores and farmer's markets. Still, this shoulder season doesn't have to be all cabbage and kale, all the time. There are plenty of ways to eliminate the winter doldrums from your diet and add a breath of (locally grown)

Rain drummed on the aluminum equipment shed and soaked the brown stubble of last year's asparagus at the Schaub farm in Mickleton, Gloucester County. Protected from the rain but not the wind in the open-sided shed, Henry J. Schaub Jr. stamped his cold feet and yanked the radiator off a grimy 1949 Farmall tractor. The tractor is one of six that Schaub hopes to revive for yet another growing season on his 80-acre vegetable farm. On a half-cold February day, he pulled off the machine's broken fan and chipped at the grease and dirt there, trying to salvage the blades and save on a replacement he knew would cost $300.

The world recently passed one significant date, and it's headed for another. No, I don't mean Yom Kippur or Thanksgiving. Sept. 27 was Earth Overshoot Day, designated by the Global Footprint Network as the time when the planet's humans surpassed "nature's budget" for the year. Since then, we've been exceeding the resources the Earth can generate, says the network, a nonprofit research group based in California. At the rate we're going, we need as much as 1.5 Earths to sustain us, the group says.