From Lisa Barnes

My son has always been an adventurous eater (think mussels, clams, shitake mushrooms), and luckily (in the eating arena) my daughter does everything her big brother does.  Although sometimes I worry they will eat something they shouldn’t while exploring outside, such as a poison mushroom or wild cherry that is not edible.  I’ve explained many times about eating things not purchased from a store, or farmer’s market.  However from as young as I can remember my son would eat rosemary and fennel from the neighbors’ yard or pick wild blackberries from vines on the road.

Last month the Sunset Magazine arrived with a beautiful salad on the cover.  Like most photos of foods, my son sees it and asks “can we make that?”  But then asks “are those flowers?”  I explain they are edible flowers.  This however really peaks his interest and I realize I may be in for some trouble.  I read the recipe and the article about growing edible flowers and promise to make the salad for Easter.  I thought it was perfect since it was so beautiful, plus I’d been assigned salad for my family’s gathering.

Unfortunately I had to disappoint my son (and myself).  I couldn’t find the edible flowers anywhere.  No stores in the Bay Area were able to get their supply in time for Easter.  For reasons I don’t know.  I explained to my son we would find them for another time.

We were at the farmer’s market a few weeks later and there they were – Calendulas.  My son was longingly looking at them with a “can we, can we?”  The grower said to go ahead and try it (but cautioned just to eat the petals).  My son of course liked them (his sister seemed to as well) and we were off to make the salad.

Surprisingly my daughter was more excited about actually making the salad (she loved pulling off the petals).  But I must say it was beautiful and tasty (although I credit mostly the dressing and fresh spring peas) and worth the wait.  I’m dreaming of planting them myself to be able to find them when I need them next year.  (However like the house was a fixer, so is the yard – so stay tuned)  In the meantime I’m researching and reading (especially Rosalind and Gene) and have started our gardening foray with some small lettuces, tomatoes and herbs…

Here’s a variation of Sunset’s “Blooming Salad”

Dressing:
2  ½ tbsp. organic Safflower or canola oil
½ tsp. unseasoned rice vinegar
¼ tsp. kosher salt
¼ tsp. black pepper
1 tsp. minced tarragon
Whisk all ingredients in a small bowl.

Salad:
Rinse and dry handfuls of mache, mesclun and chervil sprigs and out in a large glass bowl.

Add slices of Persian cucumber, sugar snap peas and radish slices

Drizzle vinaigrette over salad and toss.

Pull petals from organic edible flowers* such as calendulas, nasturtiums, bachelor’s buttons, borage and violas and sprinkle over salad.
~

See also Lisa’s two new books out now at local bookstores:

Cooking for Baby: Wholesome, Homemade, Delicious Foods for 6 to 18 Months

Eat, Drink and Be Merry: Easy, Organic Snacks, Beverages, and Party Foods For Kids of all Ages.

… and Bay Area’s New Crop of Gardeners Digging In→
~~
*Edible Flower Disclaimer
Lisa Barnes is author of The Petit Appetit Cookbook: Easy, Organic Recipes to Nurture Your Baby and Toddler, and lives in Sausalito, California.

From Gene Logsdon

About ten years ago, I planted some bibb lettuce, and though it is my favorite kind (Buttercrunch), I haven’t planted it in the garden since then. Haven’t had to. It comes up every year all on its lonesome. All I have to do is not take care of it very well, that is let it go to seed and sprawl all over. Nature does the rest. The lettuce blooms and reseeds itself helter-skelter. All I have to do is keep the tiller away when the seedlings come up in early spring. The neat thing about it is that, as you can see from the photo, the lettuce grows so thickly that hardly any weeds grow up in it, but only around it.

This non-gardening drama repeats itself every year. The most amazing aspect of it, and I don’t know why, is that this “wild” lettuce is ready to eat before the lettuce that I plant early in the cold frame, coddled with compost and protected with a plastic cover on cold nights. The “wild” lettuce grows faster. If I had any brains, I would quit the cold-frame lettuce, but so far I just don’t have enough faith in nature to do it.

Nor does this “wild” lettuce show any signs of decreasing in quality or taste. I presume that coming from seed now for many years, it does not carry the hybrid vigor or quality of the original Buttercrunch but it makes mighty fine lettuce anyway.

Non-gardening, or as my very particular sister calls it, “slop-gardening,” works for radishes, kale and sometimes broccoli in my experience. I would assume that with a little luck and laziness, anything that matures seed in one season can be non-gardened.

If when harvesting potatoes, you miss some, they will sprout and grow in the Spring if they are in the ground deep enough not to get frozen over winter. They grow just as well as the new crop I plant in the standard manner. I have often considered planting my spuds in the fall rather than spring and not have to battle mud and early frost in spring planting. But again, I don’t have enough faith.

Onions growing from onion sets, left in the garden in the fall will often overwinter and grow new tender, little stalks very early in the spring. Peas allowed to mature from an early crop will drop seed which will sprout and grow if you get sufficient August and September rains. Mine are usually too late to make peas before frost but I know gardeners who regularly plant peas for a fall crop and get one.

A non-garden will of course look the part. It will be all raggedy-annie and will require some hand-weeding. But if you can rid yourself of the Germanic impulse that most of us carry in our genes and get accustomed to a lack of weedless, straight row-ness, you soon realize that you don’t need an absolutely weed-free garden to get food from it. And of course, some of the weeds taste good too.

I don’t imagine that non-gardening will ever become popular because it requires, as I keep saying, in a trust in nature or in fate that few of us are willing to stake our food supply on. But it is fun to think about. When I was a child on the farm, we picked lots of food from the wild including strawberries and raspberries and many other kinds of wild fruits and nuts. My wife’s family picked wild blackberries for market. Dandelions were the usual early spring salad. But we never thought that perhaps most of our garden food could come from wild-like plantings. We had passed from the hunting and gathering era of human progress and by heaven we were going to sweat and slave to get our food from a settled, stable agriculture and horticulture.

Asparagus comes closest of all our domesticated vegetables to being a product of non-gardening and indeed it does grow wild and many people gather it that way. And now I know that I can trust nature to give me plenty of lettuce without having to plant the stuff. I keep asking myself how far in this direction a crafty gardener might go. I keep hoping someone will do it. As I say, I just don’t have enough faith yet.
~~

Gene and Carol Logsdon have a small-scale experimental farm in Wyandot County, Ohio.
Gene is author of The Mother of All Arts: Agrarianism and the Creative Impulse (Culture of the Land), The Last of the Husbandmen: A Novel of Farming Life, and just released: Small-Scale Grain Raising, Second Edition: An Organic Guide to Growing, Processing, and Using Nutritious Whole Grains, for Home Gardeners and Local Farmers.
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From Greg Atkinson

Oregon blue cheese from the Rogue River Creamery is one of the original artisanal cheeses of North America. It’s been made in virtually the same way at the same facility for half a century. Rib-eye steaks from Niman Ranch or Oregon Country Beef are the perfect match.

Makes 2 generous servings

2 sustainably raised rib-eye steaks, 12 ounces each

1 tablespoon cracked peppercorns

2 teaspoons kosher salt

2 tablespoons organic unsalted butter

2 large organic shallots, peeled and thinly sliced

1/2 cup port wine

4 ounces Rogue River blue cheese

1 bunch watercress, trimmed, rinsed, and shaken dry

1. Preheat the oven to 225°F and warm 2 large steak plates. Press the steaks with the cracked pepper and salt. Melt the butter in a large frying pan over medium-high heat. When it is sizzling and beginning to brown, cook the steaks, turning once, until both sides are well browned, about 8 minutes altogether.

2. Use tongs or a fork to transfer the steaks to the warm plates. Toss the shallots in the butter left behind in the pan, and sauté until soft, about 2 minutes. Pour in the port wine and turn the heat to high. Take the steaks from the oven and put a large chunk of the blue-veined cheese on top of each steak. Divide the bunch of watercress evenly beween the 2 plates, arranging it attractively beside the steaks.

3. When the wine has boiled down to about half its original volume, after about 2 minutes, pour the reduced sauce, shallots and all, over the blue cheese-topped steaks. Serve immediately.

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Greg Atkinson is author of West Coast Cooking and lives on Bainbridge Island, Washington.
© Copyright Greg Atkinson
Image Credit: © Jane Miners | Dreamstime.com
OrganicToBe.org | OrganicToGo.com
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