You really can eat them.

Edible flowers make a beautiful and tasty addition to a summer table.  The key to using edible flowers successfully is to serve them very, very fresh.  If your flowers are still sitting in the bag in your fridge, use them ASAP or you’ll end up throwing away wilted, spent blossoms.

We made a salad out of the tender greens and lettuces we received in our share.  And then we threw in a bunch of whole blossoms, right on top where they looked prettiest, and added some roasted walnuts and a simple dressing of oil and vinegar.  We also sprinkled some coarse sea salt in the salad bowl.  Edible flowers taste great coupled with nutty, salty flavors.  If you are a consumer of dairy, you would surely enjoy all of these ingredients plus some crumbled goat cheese.  It really is a deceptively simple salad because it looks so fancy.  Remember this rule of thumb: if your produce is fresh (which ours is!), simple salad with just a few ingredients and a light dressing is almost always tastier than a real jumble of lots of vegetables and fruits and overpowering dressings.

The second picture is our vegan version of Sesame Couscous Chicken Salad.  We used the broccoli and sugar snap peas we received in this week’s share (but instead of steaming them, we gave them a very quick stir fry in the pan), and we garnished each plate with some of those edible beauties.  On a hot summer evening, it truly was a fresh, cooling dish.  And beautiful, too!

And one last thing: have you made cornbread with the cornmeal we got last week?  Store-bought cornmeal can’t even come close to matching the flavor our fresh cornmeal imparts.  Delicious!