Cherry Blossoms and Maple with Sole

Spring has really come once the cherries start to bloom. Along with the tulips, the red maples are also starting to leaf out and bloom. As you probably know by now, I am inspired by color. However, I do not like the way that most gardening books deal with flower and leaf color. Most of the books I've seen have clashing colors that jar the eye's sensibility. I am a fan of a limited palette of color, both on the plate and in the garden, relying on texture and the subtle play of color to create a "wow" effect.

Trees have edible leaves, many of them. I recommend my favorite data base "Plants of the Future" to guide you on eating edibles. My favorite trees are linden leaves. I've made pestos with birch leaves and linden leaves. The problem with tree leaves is that they are very tough, unless just leafed out. April-May is a great time for new leaves. But taste one of them first. Sometimes they just don't taste very good. Aspen and poplar leaves are edible, but a bit acid tasting. Maple leaves are pretty boring and quickly get tough.

Before I give you this recipe, a word about edible plants and flowers. It is a sure thing that you will be allergic to some food that you may try. People tend to have bad problems with pollen. Although some plants are deathly poisonous and should not be grown at all, no matter how beautiful (rhododendron, oleander) people have trouble with allergens in plants from anything from hay fever to peanut allergies. Some plants may cause a mild reaction, some violent, some may merely give you indigestion or make your joints hurt. PAY ATTENTION!!! Your body is smarter than you are and often that migraine or stomach ache is its way of trying to tell you that you should not eat the food. You should also be aware that sometimes you can eat a little of something but develop an intolerance with larger amounts, or if also challenged by pollen. For instance, many people cut back on grains (wheat, corn, sugar, beer) when the grass is blooming because the overload of the grains on top of the grass pollen (also in the grain family) makes everything worse.

Having said that, I'm all for trying new foods once you verify that they are not poisonous. Maple is not poisonous in any form and people commonly eat maple syrup; however some people are allergic to maple pollen when the trees are blooming. I did have an allergic reaction (mild asthma) to my salad here, and I suspect maple. I did not grow up around maple trees and they are in full bloom and we've been having respiratory allergies. GO SLOWLY. Eat only a little of a new food, no matter what it is. Before I eat a "weird" plant, I read up on it and taste a little and spit it out and wait for a reaction. I am allergic to hundreds of foods, so I just have to go slowly with everything.

The Japanese have eaten cherry blossoms every spring for hundreds of years. They also eat the leaves. Many members of the rose family such as cherry, almond, apple and plum, may have edible fruit, but have toxic seeds or leaves. Cyanide is from bitter almonds. I have eaten almonds that have made my mouth numb and made me think I was going to die from cyanide poisoning. It takes a bit to suffer death, but like many other plant families common to us like celery, spinach, and tomatoes, parts of the plants can be poisonous or other members of that family can be poisonous. So, to be on the safe side, I used these blossoms as decoration, and only ate a little of them although I read enough to know that they are okay to eat. They may be okay to eat, but not okay for ME to eat. I have no allergies to other plants in this family, so I went ahead and tried the blossoms. No problem. There are also maple leaves in this salad, which are no where near toxic, but again, may cause allergies, and tulip petals which are also benign.



Cherry Blossom Maple Salad

Cherry blossoms (make sure you pull off the green parts and that they are clean and not sprayed with chemicals.)
One tulip to match the blooms
1 tbs chopped maple leaves
1 tbs mixed fresh dulse and white seaweed

I ate this salad with a fish entree. Unlike most raw foodists, I am not vegan. I am allergic to most nuts including almonds and coconut, and am very allergic to all grains and most legumes. I'm also allergic to citrus and soy and many other raw staples. I also cannot eat eggs, dairy, or chicken, so my options are very limited.



Sole with homemade tahini-dulse mayonnaise

1 tsp raw tahini
1/2 tsp dulse (you can also make a tartar sauce with chives and dill)
1 tbs olive oil
1 tsp raw apple cider vinegar (or lemon)

Vigorously mix the mayonnaise until it gets stiff.

I eat a lot of raw fish. Many people soak fish in lemon or you can lightly steam or heat the fish on a skillet to warm it up. This sole was warmed.

I ate it with the seaweed and maple and tulips and a little bit of the cherry blossoms. Very filling and yummy!

Enjoy the flowers, but be sure you take it slow and know what you are eating. Easy flowers to start with are herb flowers, vegetable flowers and common edibles like pansies, roses, and calendula.

Eating in Winter

In the West, it is possible to have greens all winter, even in the mountains. I gardened for a long time in Colorado and was pleased to have fresh greens even in January. There are a few tricks to this, but first, let me say, I have not gardened in the NE, but I recommend Eliot Coleman's book Winter Gardening for those who live there.

There are three factors when gardening overwinter. One is temperature, two is sunlight, and three is moisture. Plants cease to grow when temperatures are below 40 degrees Fahrenheit. In most of the West, daytime temperatures, even in winter, are above this, but the factor that is worst in a grow box or a greenhouse in the West is that temperatures, even in winter will get too high, not too low.

In the West, with the exception of some of CA, OR and WA, BC and AK there is no problem with sunlight, but lack of sun (4 hours a day) will halt plant growth. The trick to low temperatures and low light is to grow your plants large enough so that they are held in REFRIGERATION all winter, grow when conditions are right, but are large enough by Hallowe'en that you can take some of the leaves and not strip the plant.

If you have snowfall or grow in boxes, but for much of the west, moisture is a real problem, especially in places with wind. Be aware of this and go ahead and water by hand even if the water freezes later. But I have been able to harvest greens even in dry, frozen soils as long as I left enough leaves on the plant so that it did not suffer when asked to grow again. Of course, you can strip the plant and kill it or take it up when you want to eat it. In the Northwest, be sure to space plants wide enough apart to keep down disease and mold caused by crowding in wet conditions.

Even if you do not have a garden, you can eat well if you grow in pots outside, or even if you have a good market. But this article is about winter greens.

In winter, lettuce prices vary quite a bit depending on weather conditions in California. If you grow your own lettuce, you can be free of what is happening to the Imperial Valley. There are many, many lettuces that do well, even when it is below freezing. This is a picture of "Winter Density" one of the romaine lettuces that does very well overwinter. Seed catalogs should tell you if a lettuce is good in winter; most are, but some take frost better than others. A good place to hunt up lettuces for winter is "Cook's Garden."

In winter, the brassicas are queens of the garden. All of the Asian crucifers such as Tatsoi here are meant to be planted in late summer or early autumn and harvested all winter. You will find that most mustards and kales are much milder in winter than when grown in spring. The list of crucifers is very long, and I won't go into here here. There are only a couple of things to be aware of. First off, crucifers will depress the thyroid. To compensate for this, eat seaweed. Even kelp salt or dulse flakes will give you enough iodine to compensate for a depressed thyroid. Although crucifers have a lot of vitamin K, they will also thin the blood, which can be a good or bad thing, but be aware of it. They are also extremely high in Vitamin A. Crucifers also vary as to how much mustard taste they have. I find raw broccoli too strong for my tastes, but mild kales and Asian mustards are easy to eat when mixed with other greens. Crucifers need alkaline soil, so if you have sour soil, be sure to give them calcium or some other mineral like gypsum to compensate. Also try the leaves of broccoli like Spigarello or radish leaves for a change.

Other biennials like spinach, chard and beet greens are also better in winter. Eating them raw helps with the oxalic acid, but if you are sensitive to oxalic acid, be aware that many greens have it, even kale, not just spinach. Better than growing spinach are the perennial goosefoots like Good King Henry or this perpetual spinach. They are hardier and will keep giving good greens well into spring. Spinach is one of the only seeds that will sprout at low temperatures.

But this article is mostly about eating greens that used to be popular and are hardy enough to survive winter. One of my favorite greens is that of the common pansy. Pansies are often grown all winter and, like their violet cousins, will bloom in late winter or spring. Although they contain salicylic acid they are easy on the stomach. They will thin the blood, but also are high in vitamin K and vitamin A. Pansy leaves are mild, and unlike those of violets, smooth so you don't have to cut them up so fine to avoid the hairy texture. Their flowers are a joy on a salad as well

A common weed to enjoy in winter is plantain. There are many different kinds, even Italian ones with huge leaves like chard. They are extremely healthy to eat, but some are a bit tough, so you must cut them up very fine. They are mild and grow, well, like weeds. They are also much better in winter than in late spring or summer. I like to walk past people's lawns and look at all the weeds that I know are good to eat. It is a joke on Americans that they spend so much money digging up these goodies only to throw them out.

Another weed every lawn owner hates which is better, (much better) in winter is the dandelion. Rather than take a risk of pollutants, gather these herbs where you know someone has not been spraying or away from roadsides. You can also grow your own. I've had the best experience with wild chicory, which has leaves like this but much larger. Chicory and dandelions are closely related to lettuce, but more bitter, a taste Americans have to get used to. Mixed in a salad with milder greens, dandelions are wonderful and full of iron, calcium and other vitamins and minerals.

Chickweed is another pernicious weed that is good to eat in winter and rich in Omega 3. The crucifers, the mint family, spinach and the lettuce family are all high in Omega 3. Be aware that Omega 3 will thin the blood. Chickweed does not come in a "nicer" domesticated form, but plant it and gather the small leaves for it is mild, delicious and great in salads. It grows like a weed during the cool, rainy months of the West Coast and well in warmer regions inland.



A favorite wild herb of the East is Claytonia virginica or Spring Beauty. I do not have experience with this weed, but it is here because I want to emphasize that it is important to know your plant families. An excellent place to learn more is from the database: "Plants for a Future." The reasons to get to know your families are many. One is that you can grow a native kind of plant that might do much better in your climate. There are many, many goosefoots and crucifers and chicories that grow wild in the West and can be substituted for the more tender European varieties. Some varieties are perennial and I am always in favor of perennials or re-seeding annuals that require less work in the garden. The other is that if you are forced or choose to wildcraft or are camping, you will know your families and be able to identify some mustard that might be good (but hot) or an edible wild lettuce. You will also learn that many plants that are good in winter are horrid when they go to seed in late spring and summer (like wild lettuce.)

Here is the Western equivalent of Spring Beauty. It is a mild, wonderful green that grows all winter on the Coast and can be grown in boxes or in the open in the milder regions inland. It is in the purslane family, which will let you know (if you know your families) that there are a few hot season relatives to round out your seasonal diet from the garden. Miner's lettuce, or Claytonia is mild enough to eat out of hand, juicy and very prolific. It also re-seeds under the right conditions and grows on damp, acid soil.

One of my favorite "weeds" is the plant rapunsel, made famous in the fairy tale. Campanula comes in a hundred varieties, many of which will survive winter. Campanulas and their close relatives Plactycons vary in taste from pungent to very mild. Some go dormant in winter, but many will survive and stay green up through zone 5. Some are very invasive, but others will stay in place and give you lovely flowers in late spring. Still others are grown for their roots, which can be as hot as radishes or very mild. They are largely carefree, grow under all kinds of conditions, and are good eating!

There are a number of herbs that do better in winter than in summer, like many of the leaf umbels: dill, parsley, sweet cicely, cilantro; the mints, some of which go dormant, but most of which sprout so early in spring to be winter plants; and all the onion family. Shepard Ogden talks about digging up winter leeks with a flame torch in sub-zero ice.

The thing about eating salads is that they are unappealing when it is cold outside. However, if you get used to eating them and do eat them, you will find greens to be very warming right after you eat them. If you like salads in summer, try winter salads, especially if you can grow and experiment with your own greens. Remember that eating them raw means that you must break down the cell walls, either by chewing thoroughly, chopping them very fine, or putting them in juices and smoothies. If you do not care for the taste of chlorophyll, mixing greens with something pungent will mask the taste, or mixing them into pestos will give you the nutrition, but cover the taste with garlic or basil.

Eating Local

I'm on what I call the "mermaid diet." This is a diet that is a combination of blood type diet and paying attention to my ancestry. The ONLY way I was able to overcome many of my food-related health issues was to do some serious research along these lines. I cannot do the "normal" raw diet.

Susun Weed brings up a valid issue in her debate with Brigitte Mars. Although I know Brigitte and know that she eats locally and grows her own food, she does eat quite a bit of tropical food, food that is shipped in from far away. It is difficult to understand the food politics, but it is harmful to many countries even to buy fair trade food. My problems are a little more involved in that I cannot eat many tropical foods like citrus and coconut which are mainstays of a raw diet. I also have trouble with most nuts because they are acidic.

Because of my ancestry, I have a very acidic system. Not my blood, which is normal, but my stomach. There are two kinds of acid reflux; over seventy percent of cases involve, not too much stomach acid, but too little. As enzyme activity dies out in the middle years, most people have trouble digesting their food. My problems were with always with high stomach acid--runs in the family. Eating many fruits and grains and nuts and legumes just make my stomach go into overload, not while I'm eating but after my stomach empties.

But I have rare respiratory allergies to coconut and to citrus, both of which give me eye infections, asthma and sinus congestion.

I have found that eating foods native to the British Isles and Northern Europe helps me quite a bit with allergies. I can eat some American foods, but not many. Tomatoes and beans and corn are all no-nos with me.

I love being on the West Coast. I can eat food that's pretty much local to the NW and to California. It isn't trucked in very far and much of it agrees with me. However, even when I was in Colorado, I was able to get good salads out of my garden in January. In the West, we have enough sunlight to grow all year--there is no excuse at all for not having good food from your own yard all the time if you live in the West. Even when I lived at 9000 feet, the solar power was so great that I had to vent my grow boxes.

But most of the gardeners I know do not grow in the winter. I think it's too depressing. But I always get a rush about August and into September when I know it's time to plant for winter. I abhor the thought of the old-fashioned NE winter diet where one eats old cabbages, and root-cellared carrots and sprouted potatoes! It's just not necessary. Even NE gardeners can grow all year around--Anna Edey proved this in her book Solviva.

But there is one thing that is very hard to get in winter--fresh fruit. My raw diet does not revolve around fruit--it can't, I have blood sugar issues that limit my fruit and carb intake. I believe that, in addition to eating raw, it's possible to widen one's perspective about eating fruit or eating from the store, period. Even though it's hard to want to eat a salad when it's pouring out, the greens are very warming and I always feel warmer after eating a salad. Eating dense foods like winter squash and roots like beets and rutabagas and carrots are good for winter. I also step up my intake of nuts and oils in the fall, before the Solstice. After the solstice, no matter if it's 50 below outside, I try to eat more cleansing food like salads to get ready for the brightening days.

Although dried fruit is hard to eat if you have blood sugar issues, I can get away with a small amount of it. The key is to eat three dates, not ten. I cannot eat raisins, apples or pineapple and mango (way too much sugar) dates, figs, apricots, plums, berries of all kinds, are okay in SMALL amounts. They are very warming as a small snack, especially followed by nuts.

Don't take eating raw for granted. At first it's easy to eat all those strange fruits. I encourage people to explore. Don't think about what you can't eat, but explore new foods. But once you get going, try to pay attention to what you eat and be open to strange things like having asthma from coconut. Try eating what your ancestors ate, or combining diets like the blood type diet with your raw diet.

Happy eating!