Wrong. All wrong, really. Well, mostly.
Do flowers even grow where you are now? Anyway, what are your picks, huh?
The thick white petals of a guava blossom are edible and sweet.
I haven't had a stuffed artichoke since 1990 something. Mostly, it was my grandma who made them. It seemed like a great deal of work.
Does one eat the flower of the opium poppy or the vanilla orchid?
Okra is number one, you stupid motherfucker, but only if you fucking saute it because boiled okra is bullshit. Also I didn't know it was a fucking flower until I saw Stormcrow's list.
I feel like we have to distinguish between things eaten as flowers and fruits generally, and that several people aren't, because who would boil an okra flower?
That same list calls Bok Choy "Pac Choy" and says it's a flower. Bok Choy is the fucking number 3 flower at least, then.
The fruit the flower becomes, maybe I should say.
When I was a child, we all ate buttercups. We did this on the advice of an slightly older neighbor who participated fully. I wonder what chemicals they dumped on lawns in the 1970s.
You know, violet is definitely superior to zucchini. Too much savoriness on my mind, I guess.
No honeysuckle, really? But also nasturtium is obviously (to me!) the best.
I planted nasturtiums from seed last year and wow, we had a lot of flowers on salads all summer. Highly recommended, if only because having a bright red-orange flower on every salad makes the salad seem to be extra-special.
I mean, honeysuckle isn't that great, but is much-beloved by the younger set.
I've never eaten the honeysuckle flower, just pulled its sexual organs through its rear and sucked the juices clinging thereto.
Sticking to blossoms seems sound, neb. Lavender!
That's because you have taste, unlike little girls. The petals are a bit like tissue paper or something and luckily not large.
Look, I don't want a fight. Your list is fine, I'm sure, for someone like you.
Alright, squash blossoms then, you shiteaters.
The only time I ever appeared to know something about the natural world was on a stair hike through Echo Park where I started idly snacking on wild-growing nasturtiums and impressed a hiker who didn't know they were snacky.
Red tulip petals, in a salad.
Red clover, to chew on, in the outfield.
Red tulip in the salad,
You're in a murder ballad.
Red tulip in the garnish,
Your life's worth gornisht.
I swear, it didn't show up here even though the sidebar did reflect it.
Chive flowers ARE good. No shame in drawing lots of attention to that!
Capers. (You can pickle unripe nasturtium seeds as a reasonable approximation to capers.)
Hibiscus. Cloves?
Will make some perfume violet tisane to go with the apple cake in the oven. Mmmm.
Caper berries or caper flowers? Given "unripe nasturtium seeds", I think SOMEONE isn't adhering to the (obvious) rules.
31: oh! I've been lucky.
Someone made me a very nice summer drink with borage flowers in it once. (Googling "borage, poison" now.)
Capers are flower buds, AFAIK. If okra counts, buds count.
Nasturtium seeds isn't because flowers, it's in case of hundred-mile eaters and egg salad.
Black locust flowers are delicious.
Both buds and berries. Just dissected the ones in my fridge, definitely buds.
Glacier lilies are edible. They're nothing to write home about, really, but it's fun to find and eat them.
home-made candied violets. banana flowers in balinese fruit rojak (like mixed salad). definitely nasturtiums. but what is this wishy-washy "maybe squash or zucchini" bullshit? those things are so fucking amazing! in fact, you can mix goat cheese and lavender blossoms and whatever else and stuff the zucchini flowers closing them up and sort of sealing with the egg mixture and then you bread them in the usual way and shallow-fry in light olive oil briefly and they are SO DELICIOUS. but yeah also lavender is nice with a fresh goat cheese and some walnuts maybe. I fantasize about all this sort of food because it's prohibitively expensive/impossible for me to get. and if I had a violet it would not dry out at the back of the stove. I could get rose petal salad in thailand. I am always suspicious of how they are grown, but I don't know why I should care about that all of a sudden given everything else I eat.
the thing I imagine they are saying on the other list is bok choy is like "hong kong flowering chye sim" here, namely like mustard greens but better and with big upright stems supporting many yellow blossoms. I do not know if it stuns a person with its prodigious development, as from a mustard-seed per jesus' equivocal suggestion but it is a very tasty green.
At least the broccoli flower isn't among anyone's favorites.
candied hibiscus, candied violet, lavender.
rose petal, marigold, jasmine, chrysanthemum.
nasturtium, zucchini blossom, banana hearts.
candied hibiscus, candied violet, lavender.
rose petal, marigold, jasmine, chrysanthemum.
nasturtium, zucchini blossom, banana hearts.
I've never had a candied violet that retained much violet flavor. Even drying them is better.
They're my first spring food in Seattle, even earlier than dandelion blossoms, so I feel Very Strongly that they should be Right.
I once saw bachelo's button in a salad mix. Super-pretty, but I don't know what it tastes like.
Oh, come on people! Borage! And they're so pretty.
Nanohana. Sounds so much better than "rape buds."
I haven't had a stuffed artichoke since 1990 something. Mostly, it was my grandma who made them. It seemed like a great deal of work
No need to stuff them. You can just eat them as is, dipping the petals and the heart in seasoned lemon butter. I eat one like that every fortnight or so.
That same list calls Bok Choy "Pac Choy" and says it's a flower. Bok Choy is the fucking number 3 flower at least, then.
Huh. I assumed that was just a variant transliteration, but the BBC claims bok choi/choy is different from pak choi, which is what is normally sold in supermarkets over here. The rest of the internet disagrees, however, and says they're both describing Brassica rapa chinensis.
ARTICHOKES!
Oh wait, Moby mentioned them. But really, ARTICHOKES!
I've eaten a lot of honeysuckle. And wild fennel flowers. Would recommend!
Also, didn't used to be able to walk past wild mustard without eating the flowers. Peppery!
Oh, and while I am serially talking to myself, from Stormcrow's list, elderflower has to be high up there. It's so lovely. Granted, you don't actually eat the flowers, just use them to flavour liquid or other dishes, but I feel it should count.
64 makes a good point. I think roses belong on the list of flowers that are better at flavoring. I guess that means orange blosssoms, too, which already gets us to three on this new list.
46: "Candied violets are the Necco Wafers of the overbred." Fran Lebowitz
I've never actually eaten one. I think maybe it stopped being a big thing before I was old enough that somebody would have taken me to someplace likely to serve them.
I need to give rosewater another try. I've always gotten an overly perfumed flavour from it - like that awkward moment when you try to talk and put perfume on, and then all you can taste is blechhhhhh for the next hour.
5, 8, 9: It's true that you Ada isn't among the most-read Nabokov books, but "niche taste" seems a bit strong.
Violets vary, but some can be intensely flavored and delicious, with a sense of sweetness even if they're not candied. Borage has a nice cucumbery flavor. Banana blossom hasn't won me over yet. I just added a photo to the flickr pool of a croquembouche I made a while back with nasturtiums, centaurea and whatever cultivar of Viola that is.
70: -you. Editing sentences and not reading them again afterwards is bad.
Orange flower water in coffee is quite nice. I don't have easy access to all these other things but the local Lebanese grocer sells flower water. I use the rose water as my cheap toner with a bit of glycerine and aloe vera gel (mainly to get some preservatives in it).
I thought that broccoli, cauliflower, and such were officially flowers. While "popular" isn't a word I associate with either, lots must get eaten. Disclaimer: didn't read the linked article.
Marigolds in Georgian food! Also I am on Team Caper.
The last time I ordered artichokes it had been so long since I had had them that I forgot they were not artichoke hearts and just tried to eat the whole thing. Surprise!
candied violets that other people have candied are gross usually but if you do them yourself just in a day at the actual back of the stove where the heat is rising from a cake they are very nice. orange blossom water is the key to a truly superb orange pound cake's frosting (thin glaze, more like) and rose water is nice also. however as we all know I will just eat up rose turkish delight like anything, so perhaps my tastes are insufficiently refined.
69. I think rosewater is one of those things that divides the population into can/can't abide it. Possibly some people, like you and Mrs y, are particularly sensitive to something in it like some people are with dark greens; certainly Mrs y avoids it where possible, whereas I find it unexciting but innocuous.
My first thought on trying Turkish Delight was that Edward was a bigger asshole than I thought to sell out his siblings for it.
In case I have not mentioned it, I once sat behind Fran Lebowitz at a Wallace Shawn play. Walking out,I banished my shame and good sense and said "I've always loved your work!" Instead of saying something urbanely withering, she very sweetly said simply "thank you so much!"
Rosewater makes me think of my grandmothers, and not exactly in the best way. Like, old-lady-of-a-certain-era smell.
79: I ran into Rex Sox owner John Henry at Cafe Fiorello not long after the 2013 World Series and shook his hand to congratulate him, because I wanted to see his reaction at having to touch a commoner.
79: I don't know that you have mentioned it. That's pretty great. Of course, you've now moved out her natural habitat and it won't happen again.
Well, maybe here I'll meet...uh...hmm...
79 is wonderful. Reading Metropolitan Life and Social Studies as a pre-teen was nearly as foundational experience for me as Hitchhikers. Gave me a better understanding of disco culture as well.
I haven't had a stuffed artichoke since 1990 something.
Now that I think of it, we intended to order it as an appetizer at a restaurant Tuesday night, but somehow forgot. I don't know that I've ever had one.
wow, we had a lot of flowers on salads all summer.
We planted ours at the edge of the sidewalk, and I didn't trust that we could wash off the dog pee sufficiently to eat them.
86: My grandma stuffed in between the leaves with a bread crumb/spice/cheese mixture. Then you'd pull out the leaves and scrap the pulpy part of the leaf off with your teeth along with the stuffing.
If okra counts, buds count.
Okra doesn't count!
"niche taste" seems a bit strong.
Perhaps. There have been articles recently about its growing popularity.
One time somebody at a theater told my dad he looks like Wallace Shawn (which he does, albeit a foot taller). A week or two later, he ran into Shawn at another theater and mentioned it to him. IIRC, WS was quite gracious, but they didn't make a show about it or anything.
The number one edible flower is, of course, the herb. Cooked up into brownies it makes all other edible flowers that much more delicious.
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Can we have a reading group on this, in tribute. RIP.
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I am very embarrassed that I so often confuse Terry Pratchett and Ann Patchett.
My favorite Wallace Shawn story is that a friend's grandma (cultured in that middlebrow old lady way) was sitting next to him at an airport and the grandma says "I know you! No, young man, I know you! I think we had dinner together!" and he laughed and explained about My Dinner With Andre.
92. 93: Drat it. Not that we didn't know it was coming, but still sad.
oh, sadness.
alameida, how do you candy violets? back of the stove is nothing like the ways I know.
It's seed-starting time and I already didn't have enough room
That his cat was asleep on the bed with him when he died is a lovely image.
from elsewhere: remember that his sword is still hidden somewhere in England.
I didn't trust that we could wash off the dog pee sufficiently to eat them.
If you can't tell, what's the problem?
95 is fantastic.
95 is such a great story I might steal it. If only my MIL flew more often.
If you can't tell, what's the problem?
I was raised in a milieu sufficiently middle American that I'm always on the edge of being able to eat foraged food. In fact - and I'd forgotten this - the first year or two the plum tree in our back yard produced*, I kind of wouldn't eat them, because it seemed weird to eat fruit that was growing on its own in our back yard in the middle of the city** (I'd planted a garden with tomatoes before, but this felt different). And I'm still ambivalent about mulberries (sadly, a problem hat's being cured by overenthusiastic landlords in the neighborhood who are cutting them down).
*the first year or three in the house, it didn't produce due to decades of neglect. One good pruning by my dad's GF, and it took off nicely.
**well, and because they're baking plums, so it's not like they were great out of hand; if they'd been awesome, I would have gotten over it
Weird. I basically eat everything I can find, and I love that my elderflowers & blackberries come from the middle of our (smallish, to be fair), town. It's like an added bonus. Also, I'm pretty sure dog pee doesn't hurt you. Kinda gross, but not actively harmful.
I did go through a really obsessive phase as a kid of wanting to be aware of everything I can eat in our landscape/obsession with hunter-gathers, so maybe it all stems from that.
My favorite Wallace Shawn story is that a friend waited on him at a local sushi restaurant. Shawn excoriated my friend about how irresponsible it was for the restaurant to be serving [some kind of sushi {maybe Fugu?}], and then he ordered the offending fish.
In autumn I go foraging in the hedgerows on the outskirts of town (the recreation grounds where my kids play football matches often have rich pickings) and last year came home with not just blackberries but hazelnuts, sloes, and several varieties of not-quite-crabapple as well. Real crabapples have a very specific shape and colour, but these were obviously first-generation offspring of cultivated trees, seeded from discarded cores; some were large and sweet enough to eat raw, but most were small and bitter. Sadly, none of the jams and jellies I've made with them so far have been really palatable; they've either been excruciatingly sweet (though one batch of crabapple jelly did make a great pancake syrup substitute) or mouth-puckeringly astringent even when I didn't put any sloes in. I have now located a genuine crabapple tree in the churchyard where an acquaintance is the vicar, though, so this autumn may finally be successful.
I love to forage in the city! in savannah there are loquat trees everywhere, and no one but my family ever tries to pick and eat them, so when they are in season you can eat yourself (happily!) sick. they must not travel at all, because I never get them anywhere else. they grow in china, apparently. in d.c. there are mulberries everywhere, they clot the streets in the late spring. they are never very sweet but are good nonetheless. they taste homelike to me. in italy they make granita; I always mean to do that with them but I never have gotten the chance.
98: clew, I stir egg whites till they are loosened, paint them onto the violets with a paint-brush, and then gently coat them with crystallized sugar. then I just let them dry slightly so the petals are stiffened, and put them on top of cakes or cupcakes as edible decoration. thinking about it, I guess I just saw photos of them a long time ago, and I always liked to eat violets from the grass in springtime. I think I made up that method to match the photos because there was no internet to check when I was in 7th grade. I don't even know the real way?
OT: Catching a bus to the airport from downtown. Four other people were there with me. I don't remember 4:30am being so crowded when I was last downtown in the very early hours.
There was no food to forage, except maybe at the 7-11. The coffee was so awful I wouldn't try the food.
Better coffee at the airport. The sushi bar was closed, which was probably for the best. With any luck, I'll be leaving for Wide-Stance International in a bit.
Somebody at the gate smells like vodka.
They're already on the plane. I'll see when I board if the captain greets us or if he's hiding his stinking.
Drinking. Stupid anglo-saxon phone.
Berkeley has a lot of loquat trees too.
How rude is it to take off my shoes at the airport? I'm wearing clean socks and am seated in an isolated space, as far as spaces at airports go.
Space outside, sure. Not inside with a comfy chair and an outlet. MSP is kind of great about that stuff.
The number one edible flower is, of course, the herb. Cooked up into brownies it makes all other edible flowers that much more delicious.
Banana blossom hasn't won me over yet. I just added a photo to the flickr pool of a croquembouche I made a while back with nasturtiums, centaurea and whatever cultivar of Viola that is.
The thick white petals of a guava blossom are edible and sweet.
124 Spam has the password to the flickr pool now? I guess sentient AI has finally arrived.
4 minutes between the generic spam of 122 and more blog specific info on 124 and especially 125. At this rate when can we expect ekranoplan references and multiple paragraph disquisitions on whether or not Beef Wellington made with hand-gathered wild grains is paleo or not?
It appears to be stealing previous comments and putting them under its own name. 124 is taken from comment 71. 125 is from comment 4.
It's right side up now.
What's the print LB? It reminds me of one of Kuniyoshi's 47 Ronin series (my grandfather had one that I've long coveted and may end up getting, it's one of 2 samurai chasing each other around a rice paper screen in a kind of pisces type motion.)