Yes, flowers can be eaten! They can also be candied, frozen into ice rings, made into jelly and jams, and made into flower waters! It's true, that it is not for the ordinary, but it is fun for that special event or celebration party! I will start this section with a variety of things you can do with particuliar flowers, and then follow with a list of flowers than can be devoured!
Let's start with a summer salad! It's the easiest way to introduce flower cookery to those weary eyed people who now think you are totaly looney! (and still love ya anyway!). Take a mixture of TENDER lettuce leaves, and about 3 dozen or so NASTURTIUM flower heads. Now handle these gently for they do bruise easily. If at all possible, don't wash the flowers because of this. Take balsamic vinegar and good seasonings Italian dressing mix (you know, the one that's been around forever in a little package) and prepare according to directions. Just before serving, add dressing, toss a little and serve! The nasturtiums have a peppery taste and are a real treat! You can also stuff these flowers with a cream cheese dip. Add chopped lemon pepper (to your taste), chopped chives, and perhaps a little chopped lemon basil to a package of cream cheese and let set for a couple of hours until totaly soft and herbs are "blended" in. Fill flower heads, being a gentle as possible. Refrigerate, served chilled. You can also stuff day-lilies, and squash blossoms in this manner. The orange ones that are abundant along sides of roads are a good variety-although don't use the ones along the side of the road for they are to dirty, plus you can not be sure they have NOT BEEN SPRAYED!! Another dressing you can use for this salad is a rose vinaigrette. Take 1 cup of rose wine vinegar (continue for directions on this), 1 cup sunflower oil, 1 teaspoon sugar, 4 pink roses, and roses for decoration.
You can collect and dry the following flowers to use as a wonderful tisane: Rose petals, white jasmine, monarda, lime, marigold, and camomile. Mix together and use about 1 tablespoon per cup of tea.
Pickle Clover: Use red and white clover blossoms, white vinegar and honey. Alternate the different clover blossoms in a wide mouth quart jar. Fill jar with vinegar. Then pour out vinegar and measure. For each 1/2 cup of vinegar, add 1 tablespoon honey. Pour this over clover and let set for a week before using. It makes a nice garnish for vege's and fish, and serve them for hors d'oeuvres.
To make flower vinegars: (start with a chive vinegar-it's the easiest to use and to make for the begginers!) Take flowers from any of the following: chives, marjoram, nasturtium, oregano, dill, garlic, lemon-pepper, most all herb flowers, and basicly the choice is yours to sample with. Take a handful of clean, dried not wet, flowers and add to a jar of 5% acidity vinegar. Let set for at least 3 days if not more. Take out old flowers and add fresh prior to serving vinegar. You need not add anything to these vinegars to boost flavor--serve them as they are so the full flavor may be enjoyed.
How about LILAC TEA SANDWICHES!! Take 1/2 cup lilac flowers broken up and nix with 4 ounces of softened cream cheese. Spread this on a dark bread of your choice-remove crusts. Add a couple of fresh sprigs on the side for decoration. You can use peonies, marigolds, pinks (dianthus), carnations, roses, and lavendar flowers instead of lilac if you like!
How about LAVENDER! Add dried or fresh flowers to the next batch of sugar cookies you make for something wonderful! Serve this as dessert to a lunch where you have served lavender tuna! Marinade tuna steaks in lavender flowers, fennel flowers, and ground pepper. Grill tuna medium rare, serve with flower salad...yum-yum! Finish this off with lavender and orange sorbet: take a quart of orange juice, sweeten with sugar and add 1 tablespoon lavender flowers. Simmer this together for 15 minutes, let cool, freeze till almost solid, serve with lavender sprig on top!
Serve your next supper as this: Serve a calendula cheese ball with crackers. Mix sweet red pepper, calendula flowers, cream cheese, black pepper, and chopped fine carrot together and roll into ball. Enjoy this while cooking up strips of beef and onion, add a cup or so of water, use your favorite flavorings for beef, thicken juice with cornstarch, and serve in a bed of yellow chrysanthemum flower petals! Beautiful! Serve this with a burgandy wine with floating borage petals. Finish this dish off with anise hyssop flower butter cookies. Make you favorite butter cookie recipe and add anise hyssop flowers-about 2 tabls. per recipe.
I could go on and on with flower recipes, but I really just can't write them all! There are a few good books out there, one of my favorites being: Edible flowers from garden to palate by Cathy Wilkinson Barash and another very old one: Flower Cookery-The Art of Cooking with Flowers by Mary MacNicol. A couple of things I have done myself is candy flowers: I have taken violets and brushed a mixture of beaten egg whites on the petals. Then sprinkle refined sugar on the flowers. Let this air dry for a couple of days, and I have fozen mine, a friend let hers keep in a tupperware saver to be used for topping cupcakes and cakes and cookies. Another thing I enjoy is making flower sugar. Take lavender or rose and add to a cup of sugar. Let set for three or four days and your sugar is ready for sprinkling on sugar cookies or used in teas. I once did wedding punch ice molds by freezing flowers in a PALE CLEAR JUICE-we used lemonade. Take peonies, roses, and pinks, and layer them in a ice mold, or jello mold. Add just a little juice and freeze, then add more juice and freeze. Then finish the mold off in juice and freeze. Loosen mold under warm water when you're ready to use in your punch. You may also add fresh flowers to punch for extra decorations. Also, try adding chopped flowers to your morning scrambled eggs for a delightful way to start the day!
Here are a few other ideas to use with some of those flowers that will sure to impress anyone!
Tulips with pistils removed filled with chicken salad! Yucca flowers with the hearts removed for they are bitter. Wisteria for wine and preserves and fritters and honey. Verbena for fruit cups and wine. Peach blossom vinegar can be made by placing 1 ounce of blossoms into a pint of warmed vinegar and let set for about 15 days. Use this in your next dressing! Lime flowers (linden tree)can be made into a tea, or infused into honey is wonderful! Sunflowers. Snapdragons in applesauce with raisens. Saffron mixed in butter served on toast. Poppies, plums and primrose and pansies. Orchids if you dare! Gladiolus tossed in a salad or omelette. Scented geranium flowers in almost everything! Cowslips, (okay, I don't know what this one is!) But, I'll look it up to see.. Let me hear your experiences via e-mail, if any of you who read this have eaten any flowers lately! Have fun! And keep your flowers clean and unsprayed if you tend to nibble at them!