- Home
- Columnists
- Forest Food
Forest Food
- By Ish Shalom
- Published 06/23/2009
- Columnists
- Unrated
by Ish Shalom
Flowers are delightful. The magnificent variety of colors added to a forest landscape can be just stunning. Of course my favorite flowers are the delicious ones, as quite a few flowers are not only eye candy, but an actual treat to eat as well! One of my favorite flowers to eat are daylilies. Since daylilies are only open for one day anyway, I don’t feel like I’m robbing too much of their ornamental quality by feasting on their flowers. Adding them to stir-fries is my favorite mode way to prepare them. Along with oyster or shiitake mushrooms, first chard harvests, perhaps the last of any onions or garlic still in storage from last year… Daylilies can be eaten either as flowers themselves, or the buds, before they open.
Another flower, also great to eat both as flower or bud, is evening primrose. Also a favorite in stir-fries. While cooking the buds of these, the unopened bright yellow petals burst out of their sepals, creating a beautiful display of color in the frying pan. This effect is especially well contrasted with dark greens such as kale or chard. Purple really adds well to the mix, purple orach perhaps, which self seeds, and can be quite plentiful this time of year.
Nasturtium is a beautiful flower which adds a nice spicy bite, as well as a great splash of color to such stir-fries. I like to add these as a garnish, or throw them in green salads to spice it up a little bit. Nasturtium can come in all sorts of colors, everything from yellow to red. Squash blossoms are now beginning to open as well. I like to pick off the male flowers
to eat, as it is only the female flowers which turn to fruits. These can be wonderful stuffed with some kind of dip-like paste and either baked or fried. Calendula is a great flower to have around
Calendulas seem to bloom more continuously throughout the year than any other flower. Beyond being able to add color and touch to salads almost year-round, this flower is also quite beneficial to pollinating insects as well. The flower structure is really a composition of many tiny flowers together, all encased in surrounding petals, like a mini sunflower. This makes the pollen in the flower easily available to all kinds of insects, including specialist ones, such as predatory wasps, which mostly eat other insects, lots of which we consider pests.
The body structure of such a wasp is mainly designed for predation, so unlike butterflies or hummingbirds for example, are not able to get into tubular shaped flowers. When picking greens for a salad, I like to also throw in flowers that are around, such as brassica flowers (the cabbage family) and dandelions. These always seem to be around where greens are growing. I usually throw in some dandelion greens with them too, as they are far more nutritious than the common lettuce. When picking berries for a fruit salad, I like to throw in some rose petals and borage flowers.
Whether nourishing our spirits, or enriching our diets, flowers are an essential part of every forest or garden. Ish Shalom is the Food Forester at Mountain Homestead, a center for education and development of rural American skills located right outside Cocuille, in the forested Walker Creek Valley. You can reach him at P.O. Box 905, Coquille, or ish.shalom@gmail.com
Flowers are delightful. The magnificent variety of colors added to a forest landscape can be just stunning. Of course my favorite flowers are the delicious ones, as quite a few flowers are not only eye candy, but an actual treat to eat as well! One of my favorite flowers to eat are daylilies. Since daylilies are only open for one day anyway, I don’t feel like I’m robbing too much of their ornamental quality by feasting on their flowers. Adding them to stir-fries is my favorite mode way to prepare them. Along with oyster or shiitake mushrooms, first chard harvests, perhaps the last of any onions or garlic still in storage from last year… Daylilies can be eaten either as flowers themselves, or the buds, before they open.
Another flower, also great to eat both as flower or bud, is evening primrose. Also a favorite in stir-fries. While cooking the buds of these, the unopened bright yellow petals burst out of their sepals, creating a beautiful display of color in the frying pan. This effect is especially well contrasted with dark greens such as kale or chard. Purple really adds well to the mix, purple orach perhaps, which self seeds, and can be quite plentiful this time of year.
Nasturtium is a beautiful flower which adds a nice spicy bite, as well as a great splash of color to such stir-fries. I like to add these as a garnish, or throw them in green salads to spice it up a little bit. Nasturtium can come in all sorts of colors, everything from yellow to red. Squash blossoms are now beginning to open as well. I like to pick off the male flowers
Calendulas seem to bloom more continuously throughout the year than any other flower. Beyond being able to add color and touch to salads almost year-round, this flower is also quite beneficial to pollinating insects as well. The flower structure is really a composition of many tiny flowers together, all encased in surrounding petals, like a mini sunflower. This makes the pollen in the flower easily available to all kinds of insects, including specialist ones, such as predatory wasps, which mostly eat other insects, lots of which we consider pests.
The body structure of such a wasp is mainly designed for predation, so unlike butterflies or hummingbirds for example, are not able to get into tubular shaped flowers. When picking greens for a salad, I like to also throw in flowers that are around, such as brassica flowers (the cabbage family) and dandelions. These always seem to be around where greens are growing. I usually throw in some dandelion greens with them too, as they are far more nutritious than the common lettuce. When picking berries for a fruit salad, I like to throw in some rose petals and borage flowers.
Whether nourishing our spirits, or enriching our diets, flowers are an essential part of every forest or garden. Ish Shalom is the Food Forester at Mountain Homestead, a center for education and development of rural American skills located right outside Cocuille, in the forested Walker Creek Valley. You can reach him at P.O. Box 905, Coquille, or ish.shalom@gmail.com