Fresh Eyes Can Spot Overlooked Tasty Garden Treats

Bringing in fresh eyes to explore your backyard handiwork usually results in some pleasant surprises. A visitor to our vegetable garden area last week uncovered a few happy circumstances that we had overlooked.

First, she spotted some edible broccoli (in late spring!), hidden under a mass of flowering sweet peas and nicotiana. The florets were still green, tight and tasty, despite the late date. 

Normally,  this winter vegetable has bolted and turned bitter by mid-May here in the Central Valley of California. 

 

Even bolted broccoli has important side benefits: the bees will have a heyday with the resulting flowers.

This visitor also spied the colorful flower heads on the Stockton Red and Stockton Yellow onion crops. Garden traditionalists are not happy when their onions bolt. According to Texas A&M University, bolting onions occur due to fluctuating temperatures...a very common occurrence here this spring. Once they have bolted, there isn't much you can do to send energy back to the bulb. As a result, the flowering onion's bulb is usually smaller than the bulb of an onion plant where the flowering stalk is snipped off as soon as it appears. 

What to do about those flowering onions? Texas A&M advises: "Use these onions as soon as possible because the green flower stalk which emerges through the center of the bulb will make storage almost impossible."

The visitor to our garden noticed another use for those flowering onions. "Are these edible?", she asked. It should be mentioned  that she said this as she was munching on a few of the florets of the onion flower. 

Garden munchers please note: it's always a good idea to get some information BEFORE popping any flower in your mouth. A good list of tasty (and dangerous) garden flowers can be found at the Colorado State University web page, "Edible Flowers". 

Following her lead, I grabbed a couple of the florets and popped them in my mouth (yeah, I know, I know...).

 

And what a pleasant surprise! onion flowers - in small quantities - are quite tasty, but pungent. And as we found out at dinner, sprinkling a few of the florets in a salad adds a nice, spicy touch. But go easy. Adding too many onion florets could overwhelm the taste of the other garden goodies in that salad.

So, don't go into a funk if suddenly you spot flowering onions in your garden now. Just use the bulbs soon after harvest. In the meantime, enjoy the flowers. The bees will!

Too Many Peppers? Try This Relish Recipe

Here in Northern California, sweet peppers continue to ripen on the plants in early October, turning rich shades of red, purple, and yellow. The result? Peppers that are sweeter. And probably more peppers than you know what to do with. And if your onion harvest was overabundant this summer (as ours is every year), why not combine the two for a real taste treat?

We spend this time of year making several batches of sweet red pepper relish, using a recipe we found in an old copy of Sunset's Home Canning book.

 

It's delicious on many dishes, including as a topping for hot dogs and hamburgers...or just dolloped onto a cracker. It's the one homemade holiday gift that we distribute each December that our friends and family actually request!

The recipe for Sweet Red Pepper Relish:

6 pounds of sweet red peppers, seeded and cut into one-inch squares (we throw in a few Anaheim peppers for a touch of heat)

3 pounds onions, cut into one-inch chunks

4 cups distilled white vinegar

3 cups sugar

2 Tbs canning salt or noniodized table salt

1 Tbs mustard seeds

Chop the peppers and onions, then put in a food processor or food chopper with a medium blade. 

Pour chopped peppers and onions into a heavy-bottomed, 8-10 quart stainless steel or unchipped enamel pan. 

Mix in the vinegar, sugar, salt and mustard seed.

Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally.

Reduce heat to medium-low and let it boil gently, uncovered.

Stir often to prevent sticking.

Cook about 50 minutes, until relish is thickened but still juicy.

Makes about 7 pints.

A quarter-cup serving has 81 calories, 1 g protein, 16 g carbohydrates, 2 g total fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 3 mg sodium

Storage:

Unprocessed: Ladle into pint jars or refrigerator containers, leaving a half-inch head space. Apply lids, let cool, then refrigerate. Refrigerator life: 1 month.

or

Processed: Ladle hot relish into clean, hot pint jars, leaving a half-inch headspace.

Run a narrow nonmetallic spatula between relish and jar sides to release air bubbles.

Wipe rims and threads clean. Top with hot lids, then firmly screw on bands.

Process in boiling water canner for 15 minutes. Shelf life: up to 1 year.