Snacking on Kale Blossoms

 I am happy to announce that Madame Beespeaker is diversifying her portfolio! This year I will be doing projects about hummingbird awareness and will be performing hummingbird interventions--growing plants that attract hummers to community gardens. The first planting day was this week with a class at Simon Fraser Elementary in their school plots at the Mount Pleasant Community Garden. While we planted scarlet runner beans and nasturtiums for the hummingbirds, we snacked on kale  and brussel sprout blossoms.

 

It was fun to see the look of surprise on the children's faces as they tasted a brassica flower for the first time. "It's really good! I didn't expect to like it, but it's better than broccoli! Can I have some more? What else can I eat? Can I eat this sunflower? I can't stop eating these kale flowers. I'm addicted!" The bees love them too, and we have been surrounded by bumble bees, honey bees and mason bees sipping nectar and collecting pollen as we garden. This project has been sponsored by a Vancouver Foundation Small Neighborhood Grant. Many Thanks!

 Today I tried to get some more folks hooked on kale blossoms at the community kitchen at the Moberly Community Arts Centre. Mohinder gave them a try for the first time. . . .

 The verdict? A very cheeky smile tells me she likes them too.

 We drank chai, ate kale blossoms and sweets and chatted about kale, scarlet runner beans and nasturtiums--a trifecta of healthy foods that are easy to grow in your garden. All three plants have beautiful edible flowers and the hummingbirds love the scarlet bean flowers and the nasturtiums as well. The ladies also wanted some perennials, so I bought them some Monarda didyma plants at the UBC Botanical Garden sale. I put some in the Moberly Herb Garden so we can make tea when the plants are established. Monarda is a trifecta pollinator plant. It is a food plant for some lepidoptera (including some that feed exclusively on Monarda species) as well as forage for bumble bees and hummingbirds. It is an atypical bee plant, in that it is red, which is a color bees see as black. Bumble bees also love scarlet runner beans, and they are also atypical bee plants. Scarlet runner beans, unlike common beans, need to be" tripped" by pollinators, even though they self pollinate.

 I gave tips on planting these hummingbird attractors and also taught them how to protect their garden from slugs, which was a big hit! This project is made possible by The Moberly Community Arts Centre. I look forward to more afternoons in the Moberly Community herb garden with these lovely ladies.

Earth Cookies for Bees and Lady Bugs

We're getting pretty close to Earth Day, so it's a perfect time to work with clay and seeds and petals and pods. We had a wonderful group of curious kids who are going to plant seedy sculptures to grow plants for the pollinators and other beneficial insects.

 Since we were working in the kitchen, we decided these sculptures should be called Earth Cookies.

The teachers had just taken the children on a long walk to study ponds. What a busy day!

When it came time for clean up, I was amazed at how the children  tidied everything up quickly and quietly like little garden gnomes. You're all hired to be Madame Beespeaker's assistants!

Later the same day, at the edible flowers and herbs workshop, we made chocolate chai cookies sprinkled with fennel seeds.

Madame Beespeaker's Shortbread

Shortbread cookies are great for afternoon tea and using this basic recipe you can be creative using the herbs you find in your garden. Let me know what combinations you discover! The combination of lemon and lavender is nice, and if you really like lavender, infuse sugar with lavender buds and use that to make the cookies. Rosemary and lemon go well together too. If you like savoury shortbread, there are lots of recipes out there that you could also add in herbs from your garden.

The recipe is so easy:

2 cups flour,

1 cup butter, softened

1/4 cup icing sugar or 1/3 cup brown or white sugar

1/4 tsp salt

Then you add ingredients depending on your taste:

Lemon verbena: peel of one lemon, 1/2 cup chopped candied ginger, some freshly chopped lemon verbena leaves

or

just a few lavender buds to taste

1/3 cup chopped bittersweet chocolate

or

2 tbs ground chai spice (I use a locally mixed spice that includes the ground tea leaves)

1/3 cup bitterweet chopped chocolate

Cream the butter and sugar, mix in other ingredients until blended. Make dough into logs the diameter you want your cookies. Put them in the freezer or fridge to firm up. Cut them into slices and bake at 400 degrees F until the bottoms start to brown. (We dipped the chocolate chai cookies in sugar and fennel before baking). I bake them on my pizza stone.

Hollyhocks and Mallow Links

Every time I teach a workshop, I delve a little deeper and wider into the topic. I am talking about edible flowers on Thursday, and so I am mentally going through my garden to see what I could be eating. I knew that the petals of hollyhocks were edible, but was surprised to read that in some cultures the leaves are eaten as well.

In a blog about the flowers, trees and herbs of Jerusalem, Josephine Levin gives two recipes for using the leaves as well as how to eat the immature seeds of mallow plants.

"During the 1948 war for Independence when Jerusalem was under siege, many people saved themselves from starvation by eating wild mallow and hollyhock leaves, roots, seeds etc. In fact the Arabic words hubes for hollyhocks hubesa for mallows mean bread."

 In the blog Hunter, Angler, Gardener, Cook, Hank Shaw forages for mallow and makes his take on dolmades.

The Nerdy Farm Wife (great name, BTW) outlines five uses for Hollyhocks, including using them in a pretty soap.

And now I can refer you to a post I made earlier on the Malvaceae flowers in my garden.

Blueberry Lavender Panna Cotta

My son has been watching and re-watching episodes of Good Eats with Alton Brown. When I saw the celebrity chef make panna cotta I thought, "Hey, I can do that!" You can do it too and once you've tried it there will be no looking back. The possibilities of infusing the milk and cream with spices and/or herbs is so exciting.

These days I have a bowl of fresh blueberries on the table every day and I have flowers drying on screens all over the house. I love the combination of blueberries and lavender, so I made a vanilla panna cotta and garnished it with blueberries, fresh lavender and cornflower petals.

This week Robyn from Mobius Coffee and Tea made an exceptional lavender cheesecake. Her secret? Blueberries. What flavor of panna cotta are you making this week?

Artsy Fartsy Salad Rolls

Thanks to all the kind folks who came out and supported our Artsy Fartsy Yard Sale and especially to Leanne and Ruby Dog for hosting.

 I woke up early yesterday and today and baked about 8 dozen cookies and sold nearly every one. I put the remaining few in the freezer for an impromptu tea party at a later date. The chocolate truffle cookies were the best seller.

I had a nice shady spot in front of the lovely heritage apartment building.

Friends stopped by and shopped and caught up on the news.

 It's so nice to see people in Vancouver wearing their cool summer togs rather than polar fleece.

And Ruby Dog watched over us with her benevolent air.

Meanwhile, back at home, Benevolent Boyfriend made some awesome salad rolls with my edible flowers. He cooked up vermicelli noodles with a bit of pork sausage, steamed some tofu and rolled in the flowers and some Vietnamese coriander.

 If you leave the most vibrant flowers to the end they peek through.

Roll them up, seal them and Bob's your uncle.

 Peter made a peanut dipping sauce to go with them and this is what we ate for dinner. A perfect meal for a hot day, especially with a beer I like (which is shocking, because I am not a beer person). It's called "What the Huck?" and brewed in Ferny BC with Huckleberries. Brilliant!