Hardneck garlic (as opposed to softneck) makes a curlique flower stalk that is delicious eating. These curlique stalks are called scapes. Right now the scapes are perfect for eating. You can tell because they curl in on themselves. As the season progresses, the stem straightens out and toughens up, and the flower of bulbils emerges.
Click on garlic in the topic cloud to the right for recipes and other ideas of how to prepare garlic scapes.
This past week, I was in SoCal visiting family. Here is one of my family’s pet Mohave Desert tortoises (They have two rescue Mohave tortoises and a rescue Mediterranean tortoise.) eating apricots from my sister’s tree.
More on fruit and fruit trees as the season ripens.
I concocted a new summer drink with rhubarb. With three huge rhubarb plants, I have more stems than I know what to do with. I again pulled out enough stems to thin out the rhubarb, trimmed and washed the stems, and cooked them with some turbinado sugar. Once the syrup had cooled, I pureed it and served it with ice to guests. Huge success even with those who purported not to be big rhubarb fans. Great with a splash of gin.
This is a sorrel vodka tonic. We’ve all enjoyed herb butters. What about herb cocktails this summer?
pea sprouts
This time of year, I often thin my pea sprouts and use the sprouts chopped in salad. The chopped sprouts add a nice pea-flavored freshness to a salad. And it serves the function of thinning out the peas for a more productive harvest of pods. I always over-seed peas at planting time for the thinnings in a spring salad.
There are many flavorful tender greens for salads right now such as herb leaves, beet greens or baby chard. You can carefully pinch off the larger leaves and let the rest of the plant mature for harvest later. Add them to your cut-and-come-again lettuce mixes for color and flavor.
spring spinach, microgreens and romaine
These cool, spring days are prolonging the salad greens. Lovely, tender spinach for omelettes and lettuces with herb leaves for salad. One client told me she’s serving her teenage daughters microgreen salad sprinkled with chive and borage flowers! Beautiful, nutritious and delicious.
Eat it all now before the heat turns bitter these tender spring salad greens! Cut and come again!
comfrey flowers
chive flowers
sage flower
Lilies with onion seed tops
comfrey flowers
chive flowers
Radishes are ready for the harvesting and munching.
Great sliced thin in that spinach salad. Lovely scarlet color.
Of course, the traditional way to eat radishes is sliced thin with butter and salt on dark rye bread.
How do you enjoy radishes?
These cool, rainy days have produced splendid spinach for eating raw or cooked. If eaten within a few hours of picking, the flavors are the best. I made a spinach salad with herb leaves.
In the rarified community of Hyde Park, on Chicago’s South Side, morel mushrooms are showing up in residents’ yards. Jack Spicer of Hyde Park Landscaping found about a quarter pound in a client’s yard. The client was kind enough to let him keep them and enjoy them. Mum!
And morels are available from the local produce store:
