Posts Tagged edible
Posted on May 2, 2009 with No Comments
Flowers are at the top of the list in terms of traditional Mother’s Day gifts, this year you can change this tradition by getting Mom edible flowers.
Cookies by Design founder, Gwen Willhite says, “We’ve taken flowers to a new level. Each edible floral arrangement, made of freshly baked cookies, is hand-crafted by our cookie decorators. Once Mom finishes enjoying the beauty of her flowers, she can enjoy the taste of these delicious sugar cookies.” If you’re lucky she might even share them!
The newest design from Cookies by Design is a bouquet of colourful, tulip-shaped cookies, with a special artistic blending technique enhancing the look of the flowers. “Our beautiful tulips have the look of real tulips, with shades of pinks, purples and yellows.”
These bouquets come in different price brackets, “We realize that individual customer spending for Mother’s Day is going to vary. So to accommodate these different needs, we have created different sizes of our flower cookie gifts.”
Posted on August 8, 2008 with No Comments
Nancy J. Ondra is a talented gardener and well-known writer. She lives in southeastern Philadelphia in a home she has named Hayefield as it was built on such a field. She brought her property from her parents who had gotten it from her grandfather who used to farm that 40 acres of land.
Ms. Ondra loves to play with colour combinations and foliage in her garden and she comes up with new ideas every year.
This year her garden is filled with a mix of shrubs, trees, perennials, edible flowers and edible plants.
Her own garden is basically the source for her book coming out in March called, “The Plant-by-Plant Perennial Care Manual.”
Her beautiful garden can be viewed from a porch that wraps around her house and which she built herself.
Ms. Ondra started to work on her garden in 2001 after she had finished writing garden books for Rodale Press and running Pendragon Perennials, which was a nursery containing rare plants that she ran outside of her own house. She realized that she was not to good with the business aspect of gardening so she decided to leave and write her own books and create her own garden.
[Via: The New York Times]
Posted on July 18, 2008 with 1 Comment
Flowers are blooming in British kitchens everywhere. Not only do they add colour, aroma and texture to foods – they are also easily accessible as many flower types are local.
Recently at a flower show in Richmond, Surrey at Petersham Nurseries chef Skye Gyngell arranged a floral menu comprised of three courses. Some of the foods featured were: goat’s cheese, ricotta, Parma ham, rose syrup, grilled quail with a sauce made of Damask rose petals and spices.
Edible blooms were also featured at the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show. Michael Balston designed a Growing Tastes kitchen garden featuring three different kinds of edible flowers, day lilies, which have lovely sweet flavour and can also be steamed; British nasturtiums, which are usually used in salads, finally, from the Mediterranean, the blue flower of borage mainly used in cocktails.
Generally, most flowers and herbs are good to eat, however it is a good idea to use an ounce of caution, as some of them can be toxic. It is also a good idea to avoid flowers that have been sprayed with pesticides and the white base of the petals can have a bitter taste so it is a good idea to discard them.
[Via: Times Online]
Posted on June 18, 2008 with No Comments
If you only use flowers for the centerpiece of your dinner table then you are missing out on one of the newest trends, eating flowers. One expert Billi Parus is no longer using salt to add flavor to her favorite foods — instead she is using flowers and herbs.
Flowers are now even getting awards for their great flavor. The Herb Society of America declared calendula, a type of edible flower, its Herb of the Year. Billi is the chairman of this society and she says, “Herbs add flavor to everything they are put in.”
“Almost all culinary herb flowers are edible – basil, bee balm, borage, chamomile, chive, cilantro, dill, fennel, garlic, lavender, lemon balm, lemon verbena, marjoram, mint, oregano, pineapple sage, rosemary, saffron, sage, savory, scented pelargonium, sweet woodruff, and thyme.”
It is important to know the non-edible flowers as well – azalea, buttercup, crocus, daffodil, foxglove, hyacinth, iris, oleander, rhododendron, lily-of-the-valley, wisteria and jack-in-the-pulpit.
Billie has a large herb garden, and runs a gift basket business online with her husband. Even her cat loves some of the herbs and flowers she is feeding her. Billi says, “she’ll take tarragon over catnip any day!”
[Via: bnd.com]
