Food Everywhere: Eating Flowers from Bolted Greens

Food Everywhere: Eating Flowers from Bolted Greens

On the Fourth, an old college friend came over. She brought a cherry salsa, made with fruit she picked in the parking lot of her apartment. She told me that as she was harvesting them, a lady came by and said, “I bet you’ll be glad to get rid of those, so they won’t fall on your car.”

“I plan to eat them,” my friend replied, much to the lady’s uncomprehending surprise.

Turns out, I had also been thinking about using neglected foods, the stuff that's there for the eating. I had made a salad using flowers from various leafy vegetables in my garden that had gone to seed.

The radish flower was pretty and fresh tasting but not hugely flavorful:



The arugula had a sweet touch – wasn’t expecting that; was expecting pepper, but I liked it.



The most delicious flower was from my now bolted mustard plants; they had a beautiful, essence-of-mustard tang, very delicate, freshly explosive with heat that burned fast and clean:



There’s a lot of food out there, ready to be eaten though generally disregarded and sometimes just trashed: lambs’ quarters, dandelions, ramps, and, I’m sure, thousands more. The earth offers up a huge bounty of stuff, largely off scope, but edible and sometimes downright delicious.

Hammond

David Hammond wrote:The earth offers up a huge bounty of stuff, largely off scope, but edible and sometimes downright delicious.

Hammond,

Above had me putting on my thinking cap, though took me a while to find it.

Gorgeous pictures, really terrific.

Enjoy,
Gary

David Hammond wrote:Food Everywhere: Eating Flowers from Bolted Greens

There’s a lot of food out there, ready to be eaten though generally disregarded and sometimes just trashed: lambs’ quarters, dandelions, ramps, and, I’m sure, thousands more. The earth offers up a huge bounty of stuff, largely off scope, but edible and sometimes downright delicious.

Hammond

ditto on the dandelions..boiled up then served with a bit of Greek olive oil and lemon..add some good fresh baked Greek bread..and then you really have something

Head's Red BBQ wrote:

David Hammond wrote:Food Everywhere: Eating Flowers from Bolted Greens

There’s a lot of food out there, ready to be eaten though generally disregarded and sometimes just trashed: lambs’ quarters, dandelions, ramps, and, I’m sure, thousands more. The earth offers up a huge bounty of stuff, largely off scope, but edible and sometimes downright delicious.

Hammond

ditto on the dandelions..boiled up then served with a bit of Greek olive oil and lemon..add some good fresh baked Greek bread..and then you really have something

Dandelions are excellent. Being from the south, I like them boiled with bacon or salt pork.

Head's Red BBQ wrote:ditto on the dandelions..boiled up then served with a bit of Greek olive oil and lemon..add some good fresh baked Greek bread..and then you really have something

worrabwa wrote:Dandelions are excellent. Being from the south, I like them boiled with bacon or salt pork.

Well, I have to say, I tend to prefer the kind I buy at the produce market, bred specially for culinary purposes, to what sprouts in my yard, especially once we get past early spring.

And you have to be careful about eating too many of them. The French don't call them pissenlit ("piss in bed") for nothing!

The dandelions in the produce stores are a different plant entirely from the common weed and have blue flowers. We have some in our garden. A row about three feet long provides plenty of this particular green for the two of us with cut and come again harvesting of outer leaves.

ekreider wrote:The dandelions in the produce stores are a different plant entirely from the common weed and have blue flowers.

That's the so-called "Italian dandelion," which is really a form of chicory (Cichorium intybus), but I've seen the smaller Taraxacum species in stores, too.