Out of the dozens of flowers that are eaten I'm going to discuss the ones that I've eaten and are the most popular.
Dandelion flowers are sweetest when picked young, and just before eating. They have a sweet, honey-like flavor.
Sprinkling the petals over rice makes a tasty and colorful dish. My favorite way of fixing them is dip the flowers in batter and deep fry them.
Day Lilies are slightly sweet with a mild vegetable flavor, like sweet lettuce or melon. Sprinkle the large petals in a salad to add an unexpected flavor. Daylily flowers can be stuffed, or added to soups and vegetables dishes. They can be boiled, steamed, added to stir fries or battered and fried. I like them in a salad where they are delicious and a treat for the eyes.
Lavender has a sweet, floral flavor, with hints of lemon and citrus. The little blooms add a mysterious scent and flavor to custards, flans or sorbets. Lavender also goes well in stews and can perk up a wine sauce. I use them in ice cream, puddings and other similar type desserts.
Dandelion tea is another edible floral recipe.
* 4 cups dandelion petals
* 4 cups water
* 3 (1/4-inch) thick slices lemon
* 1/2 vanilla bean, split in half
* 2-1/4 cups raw honey
To prepare:
Pick dandelion flowers during the daylight while in full bloom, remove petals, then measure petals only.
Place petals in a heavy saucepan along with the water, lemon slices, and vanilla bean. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer for 30 minutes. Remove from heat and let steep for 6 hours.
Strain dandelion tea through cheesecloth. Discard all solids. Add raw honey to sweeten.
So yea just ate some Dandelions and leaves out of my tiny garden and for the 1st time in my life I may actually water them haha
Leaves are good in mixed leaf salad or with someting strong flavoured as they are quite strong and bitter
The flowers have a similar flavour but the addition of a little sweetness, I know the leaves are a good source of iron and I don't get an awful lot in my diet currently so thought I'd eat them _________________ 'Come and see the violence inherent in the system.
Help, help, I'm being repressed!'
“The more you tighten your grip, the more Star Systems will slip through your fingers.”
Also after a search earlier in the year to find out info on my Prickly Pear I found out you can eat the leaves, I then remember seeing them on a farm in Palestine
I have 2 varieties a small and the standard large Mexican one.
I've already tried the small and it was delicious, light tasting somewhere between Avacado and Cucumber with hints of citrus.
As soon as I re-pot the large one I'm tucking in
Oh and before I forget I once found the fruits on sale in (Romford Market I think) and they are highly recomended, just remember the spines though the pads and fruit carry them!! _________________ 'Come and see the violence inherent in the system.
Help, help, I'm being repressed!'
“The more you tighten your grip, the more Star Systems will slip through your fingers.”
Joined: 13 Sep 2006 Posts: 2568 Location: One breath from Glory
Posted: Thu Apr 16, 2009 12:02 am Post subject:
Good time of the year for road kills especially Pheasants. General rules
If you hit it yourself leave for another driver
Freshness - look for feathers still blowin down road or fresh blood.
Can hang for a few days in cool place if you prefer stronger meat
delicious covered in honey and peanut butter and roasted in oven.
excellent cold on butties _________________ JO911B.
"for we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities, against powers, against rulers of the darkness of this world, against wicked spirits in high places " Eph.6 v 12
Some claim that during the first Great Depression seeds were worth more than gold. It makes sense… especially if you have over 100 different types of seeds.
Today “heirloom seeds” would obviously be worth the most being natural instead of genetically modified. But lets face it, unless your diet is completely devoid of fruits and vegetables, for all you know you eat GMO foods daily if you shop at the local grocery.
Its still best to have non-GMO seeds, and is you have the bucks you can order them, or if you search all the stores you’ll find some foods marked Heirloom from time to time. But regardless, pretty much everyday we eat or throw away seeds that we could be saving, and growing for more free food and seeds.
Not everything you can buy will have mature enough seeds to grow, but most stuff that has seeds inside does. So the more markets you visit the more unique items you can get your hands on. Bulbs you can plant outright (to then let mature and set seeds to collect), and some stuff like Leeks and Green Onions still have their roots and will grow once planted. Some whole plants with their roots lopped off, such as Mini Bok Choy, will actually grow their flower mast and survive long enough to set seeds for you.
So we’re basically looking at buying groceries and getting free seeds. On my first trip I was grabbing small amounts of each item with some stuff coming out to $.15 to get a decent amount of seeds for the variety. Now its all routine buying whatever is unique and is for dinner.
Certain things you’ll still need to buy the seeds for normally. Where I live the local “Dollar General” stores have a decent selection of seeds that cost 3 for $1. And a local Asian market has Asian vareity seed packs for $.99, which provides some cheap alternatives to the ‘Home Debit’ type stores.
So when I go grocery shopping I now call it ‘Prospecting”, and at home I have a stack of paper plate ‘Gold Pans’ I use to sort most seeds on. Other seeds like Tomato can be a pain. With the salimy types you’ll need to pour the goup into a jar with some water, and leave in the sun for 1 or more days to let the slime decompose and slide of the seeds. The seeds are ready when you can add water and pour off the organic content with the seeds sinking to the bottom instead of staying suspended mid-level with the rest of it. Google God can tell you the rest.
But you can always order packets from other sources.
Now reach out to try to swap others for their types and varieties. Obviously start by contacting likeminded others that you know.
Then try posting ads in the “Barter” section at Craigslist. This should be the best way locally. I’ve never noticed anyone trying to do swaps on Yahoo “Freecycle”, haven’t tried it yet, and don’t know if they’ll allow it.
You could also try other local avenues. Wikipedia mentions a concept known as “Seedy Sunday”, but Google God doesn’t bring up anything for my local city.
*Big Screen TV’s: The Ultimate Survival Tool?!
Betcha’d never expect to hear me say that. But at least I’ve finally found a meaningful way to say ‘Kill Your TV’.
It turns out that rear-projection tv’s contain a most useful item: the Fresnel Lens. It is a huge magnifying lens (the size of your TV screen), and with it you can: desalinate water, distill water (and therefore liquor), drive a steam engine, cook food (with the beam alone), light fires (almost instantly), melt glass (and aluminum cans), and more.
During my researches I stumbled across this site: Green Power Science. He has tons of Youtube videos showing experiments with all sorts of renewable type technologies, most of which using fresnel lenses. But what he doesnt tell you is where he is getting them: big screen tv’s. You could say that I have a knack for technology, so when I got a good look at one he had listed in his Ebay store, I immediately recognized his source.
Its as simple as this: remove the frame assembly from the front of the tv, then remove the screen plexi from either the frame or the tv cabinet (whichever its mounted to), and then peel the gray corrugated outer (normally visible) layer away from the inner Fresnel Lens layer. This can be done to virtually any tv with the following tools: Large Flathead Screwdriver, Battery Operated Drill with Phillips and 1/4″ Nutdriver Bits. A couple rare tv’s required getting nasty with a hammer.
The larger the screen the more power it can handle, but there are some catches. There are 2 types of lens, and 2 grades of materials used to make them. The best lenses (especially for showing off) are “Spot”, with the second rate being “Line”. Spot’s project the entire beam into a round shape of an inch or 2. Line’s project a line shape that is about 4-6″, thus spreading out the power zone and weakening the observable results. Theoretically the same amount of power is present, although I haven’t personally had time to do any experiments with time trials of cooking or whatever.
Next we have grades. The best is made from Acrylic, and the low grade is made from Vinyl. Acrylic are stiff, crystal clear, and almost a 1/4″ thick. Vinyl are flimsy floppy, cloudy looking, and sometimes even less than 1/8″ thin. In the picture above the 16:9 screen in the middle is vinyl, but in the upper left corner you can see one made from acrylic.
A look around the GPS site and videos will give you enough ideas about building a frame and stand for it. He has interests in selling them now to the backyard scientist, I have interest in stockpiling them in my quest to becoming a Mad Max Millionaire. It’s my guess and some illuminated like minded others who have used these first hand that in the Barter Economy these things will be worth their weight in silver, or even gold. I have over 75 stockpiled.
In future writings I go more into how best to acquire them for free, and other uses of the by-products from this technique of the industrialization of utilizing societies ills to become a long living warrior of the wasteland… _________________ 'Come and see the violence inherent in the system.
Help, help, I'm being repressed!'
“The more you tighten your grip, the more Star Systems will slip through your fingers.”
In Beyond Thunderdome, the “Master” character held power for 2 reasons. First, he was the only one who knew how to run the ‘pig *’ methane plant, and second, he had “Blaster” to protect him. If you don’t have your own ‘blaster’ I can’t help you much to protect yourself, but here is power:
Google Books.
If things like power, water, the Internet, and supply lines go away you can either live rough, or you can possess the knowledge to build and create virtually everything we take for granted. Long ago before Nicola Tesla gave the world alternating electricity somehow people managed to crate a vast bit of the sort of stuff we have today with the major exception of things that run off of electricity.
And as it turns out books from that era often tell you how they did it. Google Books offers out of date and copyright free books as direct download PDF files. So what you do is think of keywords of what you’d want to be able to make, punch that in the search box, set it to ‘Full View Only’ and viola most of the results are usually downloadable books from the 1700’s, 1800’s and even early 1900’s.
Some examples phrases are: yeast, soap, forging, ammunition, farming, brewing, cooking, and so on. Just think of everything you’d want and odds are you’ll find dozens of books telling you how to do it. In reading the titles in your searches you’ll even see more specific words to punch in.
You can also get a great deal of videos and so on using regular searches, and other avenues such as topic related forums or bitorrent.
To turn this into virtually endless future Barter Economy capital you’ll need a laptop computer, a printer, lots of ink refill juice & cases of printer paper, and at least a 45W solar panel (that you’d want to have anyways).
Be sure to have these files backed up on more than one (each disk) disk thats well protected. You might even be able to barter for some of the needed items like laptops and printers, and for next to nothing if there doesnt exist an electrical grid.
As long as you can keep the printer paper flowing with invaluable data you have endless Mad Max currency. _________________ 'Come and see the violence inherent in the system.
Help, help, I'm being repressed!'
“The more you tighten your grip, the more Star Systems will slip through your fingers.”
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