I think I'm a clever forager, but it wouldn't have occurred to me to eat the blossoms that developed when the broccoli and cauliflower quit producing food and started trying to reproduce. I.e., make seeds. Have babies. It all begins with some of the leftover vegetables bolting into fertility. We had harvested all the edible chunks, so these flowers came from dinky shoots, really, that we didn't even bother with. Nature's way.
However, Anna tells us that eating the flowers of your brassica can be delightful, provided you do your tactile homework first, and determine whether the stems are edible, too. (They're not. Too wooden.)
So you'd think I had saved these babies and whipped up a pretty salad, or a soup or quesadillas or, or, or...
But no.
Cranky removed the tired brassica from the yard the other day, and it didn't even cross my mind that I should have stripped the flowers off first.
Oh, well. The compost pile is happy.
And pretty.
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12 comments:
Ooooh, how did you tip your photo at an angle like that? I have design envy now!
I found some online photo editors. I can't use Picasa, because my Mac is not Intel-based. Sigh.
But the Polaroid image comes from pixenate.com, among other cute tricks offered there.
I had no idea a cauliflower can actually produce flowers! Just goes to show how far removed I am from gardens. Thanks for enlightening me!
Marie: I suppose they must make flowers if they want to make babies.
In all honesty, I didn't taste them before the spouse got all farm-handy, so I can't vouch for their flavor. I suspect it would be nice even if it does taste a bit like cauliflower, but I suspect it just tastes like a flower. An edible one.
I have lettuce that bolted because I couldn't eat it all. Well, I suppose I could have, but didn't. Now it's flowering. So might take a leaf from your book (the one you didn't read).
Now I'm wondering what rocket flowers taste like.
What Zoomie said and you answered. Love the photo.
AHiker: I don't know what lettuce flowers taste like either! My mind thinks bitter, but if you got em, try em. And let us know.
Mouse: I had SCADS of rocket flowers a couple of years ago, and I didn't ingest any. Dumb. Try?
Greg: Thank you! Magic close-up lens is my friend.
Oh Cookiecrumb! I love it! Next time I'm sure you'll grab the flowers for something pretty to eat! Great photo angle too!
Hey, compost has to eat too! For what it's worth I have noticed that we have a bumper crop of rapini weedlings where I let the last batch flower so prettily...
El: I was tickled to read on your blog that onions grown from seeds are bigger than those from sets. We ate the last cold storage set-grown onion last night, and it was pretty plump. Now I'm stoked to see what happens with the accidental seedlings.
(I don't want to tell you what happened with our first compost pile. OK, I will. We neglected it, and it sank. It is now flat as the land we tried to build it on. Very happy clover growing there.)
Anna: Thanks to you for the education. Now we gotta keep Cranky from being so eager to compost!
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