conscious eating


City forager, instructor and chef. “T eir buds are juicy snacks and their open, fresh fl owers are edible—and stunning in a salad—but so are the older, dried fl owers, the so-called ‘golden needles’ that one can sometimes fi nd in Chinese stores.” Viljoen cautions that a small percentage of people have a bad reaction to daylilies, and they should be eaten in moderation, especially when trying them for the fi rst time. Lindsay-Jean Hard, a food writer in


No-Waste Garden Edibles Ways to Maximize Your Garden’s Bounty by April Thompson


M


ost gardens are loaded with delicious, nutritious food that goes uneaten and overlooked,


from edible greens like sweet potato leaves to fl avorful fl owers like tulips, marigolds and wisteria. Getting better acquainted with the edible parts of common backyard plants opens up a world of culinary possibilities. With continued concerns around potential exposure to COVID-19, maximizing a garden’s bounty while minimizing trips to the grocery store is an added benefi t. “Food foraged from your backyard


is fresher, tastier and cheaper than store- bought food,” says Ellen Zachos, the Santa Fe author of Backyard Foraging: 65 Familiar Plants You Didn’t Know You Could Eat. “T ere is also the novelty factor. People don’t expect to be served a BBQ sauce made from crabapples or a curd made with fl owering quince fruit. You simply can’t buy those fl avors.” Many plants and trees commonly


thought of as being ornamental have edible parts. Hostas are a common one that Zachos loves to nibble on as much as the deer do. “You can harvest at a couple stages: First, when spears are poking up and the leaves have not unfurled. A little later in the sea- son, you can blanch them and put in a stir fry or quiche, or roast them as you would asparagus,” explains Zachos. Roses are another multipurpose orna-


mental, with organically grown rose petals making aromatic additions to sweet or spicy


12 Austin Area Edition NAAustin.com


treats. Leaving the roses to decay aſt er the fi rst frost rather than dead-heading them yields rose hips rich in vitamin C for teas and jams.


Tip-to-Root Eating Several common vegetables are edible from leaf to root, including broccoli, beets, chard and radishes, says Josh Singer, a garden specialist with the U.S. Department of Parks and Recreation, in Washington, D.C., who teaches classes on “alternative edibles” from the garden. “One of my favorite recipes is a hummus made with chard stalks in place of chickpeas. It’s so creamy and delicious.” Singer also cites borage, passionfl ower


and squash fl owers as favorite fl oral foods. “Unfortunately, it does mean making a hard choice between having beautiful fl owers in your garden and eating them,” he adds. “It can also mean the plant not producing fruit or vegetables, but you can hand-pollinate female fl owers in the case of squash and just use the male fl owers for cooking. T ey make delicious fritters.” Marie Viljoen, author of Forage,


Harvest, Feast: A Wild-Inspired Cuisine cookbook, has one tip for daylilies (Hem- erocallis fulva) that overagressively multiply: eat them. “Daylilies are nose-to-tail eating: their tender, cooked shoots are as melt-in- your-mouth as leeks, and their fi rm, under- ground tubers are delicious snacks, raw or cooked. I like to roast them with olive oil, like mini-home fries,” says the New York


Ann Arbor, Michigan, and author of Cook- ing with Scraps: Turn Your Peels, Cores, Rinds, and Stems into Delicious Meals, points out some common fruits with edible greens. Strawberry greens can be used to make a pesto or fl avor water. Tomato leaves can fl avor a tomato sauce (sparingly, as they pack a strong taste)—a tip found in Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking: T e Science and Lore of the Kitchen. Carrot tops and celery leaves also make


great pesto, says Tama Matsuoka Wong, a New Jersey forager, chef and author of Foraged Flavor: Finding Fabulous Ingredients inYour Backyard or Farmer’s Market. While pea shoots have gotten to be a trendy item on many menus, Wong says they have long been an off -menu item at Chinese restau- rants. “You won’t fi nd it on the menu, but Chinese people eat pea shoots instead of beans all winter long, oſt en stir fried with sesame oil, garlic and bamboo shoots.” Many scrappy cooks know to use


garden produce that fails to ripen before the season ends or bolts too soon. Singer uses unripe tomatoes to make green tomato chili, muffi ns and bread, whereas Hard likes working with fl owers from bolted herbs and greens, including arugula, basil, chives, cher- vil, kale, sage, rosemary and others. “I mainly use them as garnishes, but every year, I make a batch of chive blossom vinegar,” she says. Leaving a plant like cilantro to bolt


and fl ower not only feeds pollinators, but also provides free spices at the season’s end, says Singer. Simply let cilantro dry on the stalk, then gather the seed pods for home-harvested coriander seeds. Letting annuals go to seed (and saving the seeds) provides the start for next year’s food plot.


April T ompson is a freelance writer in Wash- ington, D.C. Connect at AprilWrites.com.


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