Asparagus, or lack thereof

It just occurred to me that the last line of my earlier post made no sense, as I was referring to a shortage of asparagus that I had mentioned only in an off-blog discussion.  Not that anyone is paying attention to this level of detail in my blog (that would be insane) but it is a good story about recipe adaptation.

So last night as it turned out I had company for dinner, so I hopped to the store to get the ingredients for Mary's asparagus soup.  But we're having all these floods here and I didn't want to get out too far into traffic to go to the really good store.  So I went to the not so good store.  And the asparagus was just pathetic.  Not the pretty, skinny, light green kind (no doubt someone reading this has something to say about me equating thinness with beauty, but whatever, you eat fat asparagus and tell me which is better!) but the icky giant tough green kind.  Not even white asparagus, which can be pretty decent.  So short of time and craving green veggies, I got broccoli and made almost an identical recipe substituting steamed broccoli for asparagus.  And it was great!  But I really want to get some asparagus so I'm headed to the good grocery store now. 

Did that really need an explanation?  Probably not.