After months of root vegetables at the farmers market, I’m eager for the first sign of spring: ramps, tangy little onions with wide green leaves that grow wild in the Catskills and elsewhere. Delicious raw or cooked, these flavorful members of the onion family are brilliant green reminders of the spring and summer vegetables to come.

An unexpected benefit of relying on my local farmer's markets for most of the produce I eat is discovering new vegetables and figuring out what to do with them. Spying a pile of bright green leaves amid the winter root vegetables last spring, I bought a bunch and heeded the farmer's advice to treat them like green onions but be sure to eat the leaves.  I started putting them on everything, from scrambled eggs to salads.

Enjoying seasonal produce means buying what's available that week and learning how to cook it. But you don't have to be a gourmet to shop at the farmer's market. The chief benefit of seasonal, locally produced food is fresh, ripe food that may have been harvested the day before. Food that fresh has so much flavor that it often doesn't require much more than olive oil, salt and pepper to make a delicious meal. But as anyone who has ever confronted an unfamiliar vegetable in a CSA box can tell you, recipes are helpful. Find recipes for what's in season near you with NRDC's online guide to eating local (now available as a widget too) and share your favorite recipes for seasonal produce by posting a comment below. Be sure to include your location in your post.

Last week the ramps arrived again, in giant bags at the Union Square farmer's market.

The ramps I bought grew wild in a potato field on Franca Tantillo's farm in Cooks Falls, New York. The field is a bumpy, 45-minute ride by tractor from the road. Franca's favorite way to prepare this wild little onion is to chop it in half, separating the wide green leaves from the red stem and white bulb, and saute the bulbs for a few minutes in olive oil, then wilt the leaves over the bulbs. Sauteed ramps are delicious sauteed with asparagus, another spring vegetable, or mushrooms. I ate mine with frozen lima beans.

Ramp season will only last another three or four weeks but soon dandelion greens and spinach will appear at the market, followed by broccoli and rhubarb, which always reminds me of my grandmother's garden.

I grew up in the Midwest, and even in the city, you're always aware of the miles of farms across the state, the acres of corn along the highway. But by and large those farms grew just two crops -- corn and soybeans. The vegetables in my neighborhood grocery store came from all over the world, by plane, ship and truck. Even produce grown in the United States travels an average of 1,500 miles to market. The implications of this global agriculture system are both large and personal -- from global warming to flavorless fruit that has been harvested before it's fully ripe.

Alternatives to this production system need to be nourished. Next week NRDC will honor three leaders in sustainable food at the first ever Growing Green awards. The awards are not just for food producers but also business and thought leaders that are shaping a more sustainable system of food production, distribution and consumption.

But let's not forget the primary beneficiaries of local food -- the eaters! Share you favorite spring recipes by posting a comment below.