Crown Chakra Pudding and Blue Edible Flowers

I'm not as keen on flax seeds as most raw foodists. I guess it's because I'm an artist and grew up with linseed oil as a paint thinner, not something to eat! The small amounts of Prussic acid in flax will not harm you; you'd have to eat pounds of it to get the toxic amounts. People eat flax to thin the blood because it is high in Omega 3 fatty acids. This is a new buzz word, but the point of Omega fatty acids is to balance them, not to just run out and eat a ton of flax oil.

Walnuts, also lauded as high in Omega 3 are also high in Omega 6. Omega 6 is necessary to the functioning of the body, but on the standard American diet people eat muscle meat from animals raised on grains (not grass) and eat too many grain products, so they get a ratio of 100-1 Omega 6 to Omega 3 instead of the recommended ratio of 3 or 2-1. A good rule is to stay under 6-1, which is very difficult if you eat a lot of grains and oils like canola and corn. Most nuts are very high in Omega 6s. Unlike many land animals, humans need the same ratio of Omegas that sea animals need.

You can get Omega 3s from sea products EXCEPT farm bred salmon, and from grass fed animals IF you eat the organ meat. The other way you can get Omega 3s is from many greens such as spinach, kale and the entire mint family. Which brings us to Chia seed, made famous by the hokey commercial where kids used the seeds to grow in ceramic figures for instant "hair." Chia is the seed of a member of the mint family: one of the sages, closely related to common garden sage. Go ahead and eat all the seeds of this family, unless the plant is not familiar to you. There is nothing wrong with peppermint seeds, except that they are TINY. Chia seeds are large for seeds in the mint family. But the cool thing about chia is that when you add water to them, they swell and get very sticky, not so much slimy as like a pudding. I use this quality of chia to make desserts.

For this pudding, I took a half-cup of chia and added about the same amount of water. Stir the seeds and let them soak. Then you have a pudding base to which you can add just about anything. Sweet, dessert type stuff is more familiar to us; if you were to add salt, the chia would be more like caviar.

Here is a recipe for a pudding to nourish the crown chakra at the top of the head. Blue-indigo is the color of this chakra. Good for the sinuses and the eyes!

1/8 cup dried elderberry fruits (soaked)
1/4 cup dried blueberries (or 1/2 cup fresh)
the chia mix
honey to taste
cinnamon or cardamon or other spices to taste
top with edible blue flowers (here I've used rosemary.)

Blue Flowers

I love edible flowers. They are often very tasty and they put pleasure into food preparation. I'm taking you on a tour of blue flowers in this post by family.

My favorite blue flower is Anchusa azarea, a plant in the borage family common to the Mediterranean. This is a tough plant and wonderful to grow. Unlike comfrey, it does not spread everywhere. Unlike borage, it is a perennial. It produces hundreds of beautiful blue flowers in late May and again in late summer if you cut it back. But the secret is: if you get to the flowers before the bees do, they are absolutely delicious. If the bees get there first, they are pretty, but not sweet, very mild. But I love blue in the garden and anchusa is spectacular. The flowers go well on salads and on deserts or are fun to eat out of hand. The plants are carefree, but might want to be tied back because the stems are so heavy with flowers that they tend to fall over! A flower for the back of the garden, the same size as glads.

The famous flower in the borage family is...borage! These little gems are also very sweet, but the bees love them. This is a re-seeding annual, another carefree plant that will keep coming back even in very cold climates. The seeds are used to make borage oil and the leaves have a pleasant taste of mild cucumbers. The flowers are beautiful and have been used for ages in sweets and candied for drinks.

There is also a beautiful blue comfrey in this family if you like comfrey. The flowers of lungwort are also a gorgeous blue color.


I keep going on about the campanulas, which used to be called "rapunsel" in Europe and are also called "rampions" and "harebells." All of the campanula flowers are edible and very benign. There are campanulas that spread like wildflower and there are some that are better behaved. Some are arctic flowers and will do well at zone 2, if you are blessed with that climate. They are tough plants and the bees love them. They have been selected and bred widely and there are rock plants and tall plants and drought friendly varieties. Although some campanulas are good for roots and others for leaves, all have wonderful flowers. Grow some just for the fun of throwing the flowers on a salad all summer.



The onion family is blessed with a number of beautiful blue flowers. However, some taste like onions! The flowers of grape hyacinth are HOT, like strong garlic or onions. So most of these are not desert flowers. You have to taste them to see.

Most of the onion family has white flowers, some light pink. But some of our favorite flowers of all time are in this family: tulips, lilies, and gladiolas. Gladiolas are wonderful flowers in mid-summer for sandwiches, salads and anything else you can think up. They are strong enough to hold up well, but not to cooking where they will turn into a little slimy mess. They are mild and taste like not much at all, but they have a texture like a baby lettuce.



There are many other flowers in the onion family that are worth trying because they are so easy to grow. One of the most beautiful plants in this family that is still wild is the camass, not to be confused with the "death camass" which has white flowers. Some are native to the Rocky Mountain West, which gives you a clue as to their hardiness. I include them here as an example of a beautiful plant to grow in a "wild" garden that will give you a little bit of "blue" to throw on your salad.





I love nigellas. There are three basic nigellas. The Spanish nigella has rather hot seeds, and the Nigella sativa has seeds that are almost the same as onion seeds, and called that by Indians. The seeds are widely used in Indian and Mid-Eastern and Slavic cooking. But the garden variety nigella, called "damascena" or commonly, "love-in-a-mist" has sweet seeds that are used in confections. The flowers are stunning, some of them pure blue. The ripe seed heads are used in dried arrangements. This is another self-seeding annual that will come back year after year. If you like Indian cooking, do not go without planting "black seed" or Nigella sativa in your garden for a spicy treat.


And violas, pansies and violets! Where would edible flower cooking be without them? I've had pansies and violas last all winter in my Colorado gardens. They are hardy, pop back after hard freezes and snowstorms and will be a staple of your winter garden in milder areas. And the color! Flowers in the viola family have been bred into every color imaginable. When I did catering, I used these flowers as the backbone of my cooking when I did weddings to match the bride's colors. Easy to grow, pest-free, the foliage is edible, the flowers are edible and they are wonderful for gout, arthritis and a host of over blood and joint problems, having salicylic acid.


The other family where you find a number of edible blue flowers is in the mind family. This is a picture (courtesy of the web--thanks!) of dragon's head, which is a citrus tasting tea plant that comes in a re-seeding annual or a perennial and is native to Eastern Europe. The leaves and flowers are delicious in teas or in salads and deserts.


Many of the members of the sage family have blue flowers and are very good. But some tend to be a bit strong, so taste first. Where I live, rosemary blooms in March, so I have used those flowers in my pudding. The flowers taste like mild rosemary and made a suprisingly good combination with the elder and blueberries. Use the flowers of lavender and mints, thyme and hyssop on all of your creations.

Cooking with flowers adds elegance and pizazz to your meals. Children love edible flowers. They also love bright colors. The next time you go out in the garden, pick some flowers. Most garden plants have edible flowers, with the exception of the tomato family, which are controversial.

Enjoy!

Fun with White Roots!

I'm keen on root crops in fall and winter. Most root crops are meant to be cooked: taro, sweet potatoes, potatoes, yams and arrowhead all have anti-nutrients in them or enzymes and chemicals that make them toxic or pretty nasty to eat raw. I've known people who ate potatoes and yams raw, but they are both so full of starch as to be pretty slimy and vile.

I eat plenty of carrots and dark greens, so I walk around with orange-ish palms anyways, so I don't worry about how much nutrition to get in root crops. I want bulk, carbs, and that full feeling that you can't get from most veggies. I also have the taste buds of a child, so I'm not keen on strong-tasting food.

I'm enticing you with this picture of a mushroom dish on some celeriac that I colored with a dab of spirulina to show you that white roots can be fun, even for kids.




Queens of the roots are the umbel family. They've been domesticated for hundreds of years as to not look like these wild roots here. But if you are running around in the wilderness in winter and KNOW your umbels (remember hemlock is in this family) you can get a pretty good meal out of even roots like this. But umbels love the mud, the muddier, the better. I'm showing you these roots in a more natural state to show you that the grocery cleans them up (A LOT) before they put them on their neat shelves.

If you grow umbels, they want mud, well not all mud, but light, almost sandy soil that is constantly moist. Any drought, any check in the moisture and those lovely carrots will be BITTER. And umbels can get mighty bitter. They can also be pretty strong, so taste them before you go crazy with them. If you grow them, they want coddling, unlike some other roots that are more forgiving of bad climate.

Umbels with edible roots number in the hundreds. But here are the more common ones you can find in the grocery: carrots, celery, celery root (celeriac) parsley, parsley root, dill, caraway, cilantro (leaves) and coriander (seeds), anise, fennel, bulb fennel (finocchio), and parsnips.

If you have enough beta carotene and want to try a sweet variety of carrot, go with white. White carrots tend to be sweeter than orange and much sweeter than red or yellow carrots. They also seem more resistant to the bitterness of the colored carrots. When you eat raw, you really notice things like bitter carrots.

(I love this cat.) Here is a pile of white carrots courtesy of the web (I'm using some of these photos that are not mine to show you what these plants look like.) You can see that white carrots look very much like parsnips. But, big taste difference. All the roots of the umbels above are edible, some very good. Fennel root is as good as fennel stalks. People use them mostly in soups, but I just like eating them for a crunchy treat out of hand or grated up in some experiment.

Most moderns don't know that the roots of parsley are good. I like growing veggies that have multiple functions. Carrot tops are good when young, and some varieties of parsley have good roots like this small one here. The large root is a parsnip. Note that the leaves of parsnips are NOT edible. Many umbels can cause dermatitis in some people, anywhere from a mild rash to a serious case like poison oak. If you get rashy after you've been pulling carrots, use a gentle soap right after you deal with the greens and don't eat them. Parsnips greens will give many people a rash, which is why they cut the tops off in the stores. But parsnips are wonderful in raw dishes. They have a spicy, sweet taste that goes well in many dishes. Experiment!


But my favorite of the root umbels is celeriac. It's grown in muck and highly sprayed. NEVER buy and eat celery and celeriac that is chemically grown. The bugs love it and it's full of pesticides. The higher price for organic is totally worth it for carrots and celeriac. Some crops don't get bugs and the organic label is more for "show" than something that you must choose.

Grated celeriac is dry and mild. I use it in my sushi recipes, but it's equally good grated for everything. It thins the blood, which is good for some and bad for others and cleans the liver, helping with gout, arthritis and a host of auto-immune diseases. You can also eat the leaves, but they are strong.

Just as carrots come in other forms, so do beets. I do not use white, golden, or pink beets because they give me a sore throat, just as other roots in the chenopod family do. Pay attention to things like this. A golden beet might make your throat sore; a tea made with yellow dock might make your throat close up (happened to me.) Be careful when trying new foods, especially in the raw form. Try a little, then wait for a reaction. But white beets, both round like this and mangels (sugar beets) are an alternate white root crop for fun. But if you find the taste of red beets to have a strong, "beety" taste, white are even stronger! They are good mixed with other roots, and again, the leaves are as good as spinach or chard.

Many people have seen jicama roots, which look like large, brown turnips on steroids. They are delicious. Many bean crops have edible roots. I'm showing you the foliage and flowers here, because, although the roots are wonderful, the seeds are poisonous. Many bean seeds are more or less poisonous, which is why most of them are cooked. If you eat raw, there are seeds you can eat as well as green and seeds you can't, like American common beans (although green beans are okay.) Jicama, like kudzu, is a tropical crop, so the roots are coming in from Mexico. They are a juicy root and a great nibble. But if you have gas problems with beans, jicama might give you gas. They are full of indigestible starches that bother some and don't bother others.

Another "gassy" root crop are the roots of the sunflower family. This is a picture of chicory, which grows a fine root. Other familiar roots in this family are sunchokes (jerusalem artichoke), burdock and many, many wild crops like balsam root and Oregon sunflower. They are tooted as a good root for diabetics because the carbs are in the form of inulin, which is indigestible, thus they are low in sugar. Some people do fine with inulin; for others it is a nightmare of gripe and gas. Eat a little bit first. Cooking does not help, unlike with beans.

But chicory and burdock and dandelion roots are unparalleled as liver cleansers, excellent for gout and other diseases of toxic blood. Beware though, of another problem. If you have ragweed allergies, do not eat anything in this family: lettuce, chicory, sunflower seeds, are all going to aggravate it. But for most people, the roots of these crops are easy to grow, giving edible leaves and seeds, are healthy and make a crunchy root for eating out of hand or grated.

Here is the other most famous of the root crops, roots from the cruciferae family: radish, turnip and rutabaga. The hot spices are found from horseradish and wasabe which are both roots in this family. Mustard is from the seeds.

Radishes, like these daikons, practically grow themselves. They are very weather resistant. But, bugs love them, so go with organic. Daikons and other radishes come in a hundred varieties, some red and green, many with colored skins from red to green to black. Daikon radish is delicious raw and is a staple in sushi bars.

But if you have a sensitive stomach, almost everything in this family may give you gas. So go slowly at first. Most people get used to this family after some time being raw, others do not.

One of my favorite roots is a weed. And I mean a weed. If you've had problems with campanula in your yard, you know that even the tiniest piece of root will grow into a hundred monster plants. Why? Well, it's also known as rampion and rapunsel and was bred to be a plentiful, cheap root crop like radishes. People stopped eating it, why? Only Rapunsel's mother knows. She had to forfeit her baby for stealing the greens from her neighbor's yard.

Rapunsel is mild and crispy. It's relative, platycon or balloon flower is as pungent as radishes and is found dried in Korean grocery stores. But Americans don't grow it or eat it and you can't even find a picture of it, only an old drawing like this. So sad. The flowers, leaves and roots are edible, some better than others. Plants for a Future Database has a long list of the best of the campanulas to try, but you must grow them. Italian seed houses still sell the seeds of rampion, but to get seeds, you may have to go to English seed houses for wild and native plants. Or check your backyard. The campanulas have wonderful purple bellflowers or harebells--yep, same plant. But some have almost no root and others, these thick crunchy, yummy roots.

Okay, enough on roots. Time for a winter dish!

Blue roots with Mushroom Sauce

One cup grated celeriac tossed with a pinch of spirulina
(try tumeric for yellow, beet powder for red and pink)

Marinate a handful of shitake mushrooms. (Do NOT use the regular button mushrooms or criminis or portobello mushrooms which are not good for you raw.) Most mushrooms are not good raw, so stick with the ones recommended, like shitakes.
Marinate in 1 tsp raw cider vinegar and olive oil
With:
Chopped raw, oil cured olives (or sun cured)
Soaked sesame seeds (soak and wash to get rid of oxalic acid)
For an Asian dish, you can use some soy sauce. I'm allergic to it, so I've used a little bit of fennel here for a more Italian taste.

This dish is fun, filling and good!

Experiment, have fun, give your kids blue food! Hah.

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.