Edible Flower Salad and the Garden
Edible Flower Salad
Our garden has been kicking ass and taking names this year! Our lettuce has supplied us with more than we could possibly eat; our nasturtiums are blooming like crazy and have a variety of tastes. Red is spiciest, orange is medium and yellow is fairly mild. I still have a hard time eating flowers though! I look at them and think, “I’m not suppose to eat this, it is too pretty!” But then, I remember how tasty they are and savor them, knowing that their season is fleeting and this is one thing you can’t just go get from the store. We made this salad for a barbecue we went to last Saturday. It looks sort of magical in the dusk light, doesn’t it? The salad was simple, lettuce and flowers from our garden, sliced strawberries from the store and a honey mustard dressing too. The dressing is so deceptive though! It is the color of avocados, has an avocado on the front and so I’ve been calling it “the avocado dressing” for years! I JUST discovered that there are NO avocados in it. They just tell you it is good on avocados. Boo. It is still really tasty though!
Here is our garden a few weeks ago!
Later this summer we are having an edible flower party so I’m hoping some of the blooms will still be around so I can use them in the dishes I decide to make. We also planted some little violas for eating too. They look so amazing next to the vivid warm colors in the nasturtiums.
We also had a good crop of radishes; peas and our first carrot emerged from the dirt yesterday! And our little alpine strawberries have been producing tiny delicious little berries for about 6 weeks now and how no signs of stopping. Those are amazing to munch on while weeding our little plot! It is so amazing how much you can fit into such a small space!
As we approach mid-summer I am already dreaming about the green beans, the basil and the ripe tomatoes. Our spring veggies have been great so I’m hoping our summer ones will be nice too!
Martin Seay says:
July 16th, 2011 at 5:34 pm
That experience of discovering after eating something a long time that it isn’t at all what you thought it was is lame, but also kind of amusing. I once bought a jar of Braswell’s fig preserves and ate most of it — thinking the whole time, “These aren’t very good” — before I noticed there were no seeds in it and actually read the label. Turns out it was a jar of Vaseline.
Kidding! It was a jar of PEAR preserves.
That edible flower salad was awesome, Beth Rooney! Along with the rest of the internet, I am eager to see what you’ll do for the flower dinner party . . .