I will be posting recipes using flowers, many of which we will try ourselves. I’m really kind of excited about it! We’ll have to start gently, easing the children (and my husband!) into it with candied flowers and flower icecubes. I think I’ll strew flowers in salads, then try herbed butters next, then some floral butters. Once the family’s taste buds can handle eating nasturtium and rose petals and lavender, then we can get adventuresome! I hope you will join me on this exciting journey!
I think there’s never been a time before this century when flowers were not used extensively in cooking. Yet the 20th century lost this fine art, and we have yet to regain it. Cook books, herbals, and folk lore from the Medieval period through the 19th century give us an amazing picture of the varied diets of the people, and suggest much more refined palettes than perhaps we have today. Imagine a salad with a minimum of 35 different ingredients! Yet that’s what the head gardener to King James II of England recorded. Such a salad would include candied or pickled roots such as daisy, fennel, angelica and parsnip, leaves from primrose and violet, greens of purslane, arugula, plantain, and hyssop, as well as their flowers, candied or pickled. Even vine tendrils were used! Salad dressing included oil, vinegar, mustard and egg yolk. And we think the Caesar salad is creative!
I will be posting recipes using flowers, many of which we will try ourselves. I’m really kind of excited about it! We’ll have to start gently, easing the children (and my husband!) into it with candied flowers and flower icecubes. I think I’ll strew flowers in salads, then try herbed butters next, then some floral butters. Once the family’s taste buds can handle eating nasturtium and rose petals and lavender, then we can get adventuresome! I hope you will join me on this exciting journey!
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWelcome to Growing Goodness! This website is dedicated to growing good things, both plants and children. It's a gardening blog with maternal overtones, as I discuss the goodness and value of plants, both wild and domestic. In the process I hope to help you pass a love of nature on to your children. Happy Gardening! Archives
August 2011
Categories
All
|