Asparagus

After dispensing with a few last-minute provisioning questions - where to source the "sky-facing peppers" that heat up Hong Kong's street food; how to get a customized slip tucked into the fortune cookies - the restaurant called Kong opened with a bang last week, strings of firecrackers dancing on the sidewalk on Second Street at Fairmount Avenue. It is said to be an interpretation of the dai pai dongs , open-air food stalls once ubiquitous (now few and far between) on the crowded outdoor shopping streets of Hong Kong.

Not that you need an excuse to eat more watermelon, but it does have 40 percent more of the antioxidant lycopene than tomatoes. Plus, according to the USDA, watermelon is fat-free and a good source of vitamins A, B6, C and thiamin. But picking a ripe melon can be tricky. If only you could taste it before buying. "I love watermelon, and I taste away when I'm shopping for it," says Jimmy Iovine of Iovine Brothers Produce in the Reading Terminal Market. He's been selling watermelons from Florida and Georgia lately, but the Jersey crop should be in this week, he says.

Sometimes you encounter an outdoor café in a most unusual spot. Due Amici, off Route 130 in Cinnaminson, has a charming walled courtyard with a dozen tables, pond and fire pit, open April through Halloween. The season is starting to cooperate so diners can really enjoy it. The restaurant's main dining rooms, with apricot walls, wooden tables, and wonderful black and white photos of Italy, offer casual comfort, but risk becoming cramped and noisy on a busy night. Go alfresco when the weather permits.

We find ourselves on the cusp of an ambivalent May, the first, fragile blush of spring already fading - a special breed of Jersey broccoli rabe, so tender it can be eaten raw, finished; good-bye, too, to the feathery, early dandelion greens (saluted with their own annual banquet in Vineland), gone. Now you see bundles of tight-fisted fiddlehead ferns. Now you don't. It is reassuring, in one sense, to watch the parade step off, to feel the ancient rhythms kick in: In the woods near Fort Washington State Park, garlicky wild ramps were making their customary debut last week, their lily-like leaves waving, flags of surrender to foragers bent on adding them to a springtime supper.

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)

SINCE TATTLE'S regulars have been keeping their noses clean this week, we've had time to talk to some of Hollywood's most popular young stars. In the case of Abigail Breslin, real young. She's 11. But the Oscar nominee for "Little Miss Sunshine," who'll be back in theaters next Friday in "No Reservations," is already a seasoned pro. Before we could even get out a "Hello," Abigail was answering unasked questions. "I was in Philadelphia once," she said, with the type of enthusiasm that disappears soon after one turns 12. "I stayed on the Rittenhouse Square and went to see Betsy Ross's House.

We're in the kitchen with Nicholas Normile, who is making asparagus sous-vide to serve with a deconstructed eggs Benedict. He will soft-boil an egg, delicately remove the shell, extract the yolk with a syringe, use that to make hollandaise sauce, and then inject the hollandaise back into the egg with the syringe. It's an ambitious project for an eighth grader, but at 14, Nick Normile is thoroughly infatuated with food. In school, he researched the menu of a state dinner served during the FDR administration - prepared the salmon beurre blanc, salad with a passion-fruit vinaigrette, and potato blinis - and fed it to his history teacher for extra credit.

Q. My new in-laws have a small farm with a vegetable garden in which they grow different items for themselves and their extended family. Last year we got about 40 pounds of asparagus over about a two-month period. When I was growing up, we never had asparagus at home-maybe because I was one of six boys. We were what you call a "meat and potatoes" family. Please share different ways to prepare asparagus. Also, can I freeze some of the surplus? Thanks, from looking for anything but lemon butter . . . - Chris S. A. First of all, congratulations!

By the stalk or the bundle, fresh domestic asparagus is too good to pass up when it's in season, generally from March through early June, depending on the weather and location. There's no better time to eat your fill of tender, succulent spears than when the domestic harvest is in. In peak season, when the supply is good and prices are low, treat yourself to a pound or two of plump, tender young spears surrounded by classic accompaniments: lemon wedges, butter, Hollandaise, vinaigrette, salt, and freshly ground pepper.

The weekend White Houses, maybe even more than the Oval Office, have given America unforgettable, if often engineered, images of its presidents. Ronald Reagan will always be the hale horseman galloping across Rancho del Cielo; John F. Kennedy, the confident patrician sailing off Hyannisport; George W. Bush, the dusty-jeans cowpoke cutting cedar on his Crawford spread. John Kerry has no Texas ranch. But he does have a big home in Boston, and four more of his wife's in choice locales around the country, including a $3.1 million, 88-acre estate called Rosemont outside Pittsburgh.