Eating Flowers
The nasturtiums have taken over our community garden again this year. While it’s annoying having them shade the strawberries and herbs, it is delightful to have a virtually indestructible source of edible flowers! One time during our courtship, Mr. R and I purchased a package of edible flowers from a grocery store and ate them on a camping trip in the dark. So I associate them with romance (of course) and luxury (I think that plastic package cost $5). Good asociations aside, nasturtiums are delicious…
an initial butterfly whisper of bittnernes followed by a tiny crunch of sweet nectar from the center of the flower. I’ve been adding them to all my garden harvested salads this spring, and for all of the reasons listed above, am finding them a lovely little talisman against the spring blues. Eating them at work in my dusky cubicle makes me feel like a renegade gourmand!
It also helps to have no qualms about roughing-up the nasturtium plants themsleves, since they’re basically weeds. And if I kill them, so much the better for the strawberries! In the above picture, you’ll also notice some little blue flowers. Our garden partners thinks that they are borage… they are edible, prickly little things that taste like fresh cucumbers! Let me know if you can ID the plant…
