Our gardens: An inventory

When you take a turn about my garden you certainly wouldn't be speechless from the beauty of the flowers. You might wonder why I don't spend more time ridding it of that terrible sticky weed, or you might be curious about why I ignored all the advice and went ahead and planted mint in the garden, where it's free to plot how it will invade the whole darned property. Overwhelmed by the flowers though? No.

It was pretty surprising to me then to find that I had in excess of 15 varieties of flowers, and when we added what Jess' garden had on offer, we were looking at over 20 flowers that may or may not be edible. The very act of walking about the garden inspecting plants, collecting flowers and enjoying the weather was energising and relaxing.

After doing some (moderately) rigorous research on edible flowers, there were some resounding messages that we would be irresponsible not to mention.

Resounding Message 1: Do not eat any flowers without a positive identification using the plant's full scientific name. Seriously, don't mess around with this. Flowers can be brutal: breathing difficulties, vomiting, diarrhoea, burning mouth and tongue, mental confusion, convulsions, paralysis, death. Enough said. Here is a good resource for poisonous plants.

Resounding Message 2: Keep your flowers clean. No pesticides, no herbicides, no fertilisers. Don't use them if they look bug damaged or ill-formed. Only eat ones you've grown yourself or that are specifically labelled as edible.

Resounding Message 3: Once you've got a positive ID and you are confident the flower is safe to eat, consume only a little bit the first time you try it. Sensitivities and allergies vary from person to person, so even if it's safe to eat it still might not agree with you.

Resounding Message 4: Only eat flowers in small quantities. Just because a little bit of something is good, doesn't necessarily mean more is better.

Resounding Message 5: Practise extreme caution when eating edible flowers with young children around. They see you eat one flower and could well think that it's ok to eat all flowers.

After we collected one of every single flower in our gardens, we went through to check which ones we had a positive ID for. There were a few we had to discard because we weren't sure of what they were, but for the rest, we went ahead and checked our sources for their edibility. Finally, we did a taste-test. See table below for our results.

An inventory of all the flowers in Jess and Leanne’s gardens for which

 positive identifications were achieved

Flower	Edible?	Tasting notes	Other comments
Bottle brush	No
Cape weed	No		Unless you are a grazing animal.
Coriander flower	Yes	Everything you love/hate about coriander itself, but more intense.
Costal Rosemary	No
Dandelion flower	Yes	Leafy, salady.
Elderberry Flower	Yes	A bit floral. Underwhelming.	We were drinking elderberry syrup with sparkling wine while we were doing our taste test. Can highly recommend it for this purpose.
Fuchsia	Yes	Not that tasty, apart from the long dangly things that come out of the middle. They have a little bit of nectar at the end.	I think we call the long dangly things the stamens and the pistil.
Geranium	Yes	Nah, not very nice.
Kale flower	Yes	Yum! Like kale, only sweeter and easier to chew.	No need to worry too much if the kale bolts to flower this summer – it’s all good.
Lavender	Yes	Tastes like soap. Or maybe soap tastes like lavender. Either way…
Lemon/Lime/Orange blossom	Yes	Zesty and succulent.	We imagine it tossed around in a fruit salad with mint leaves.
Nasturtium	Yes	Inoffensive in the same way a salad leaf is. A lot more orange though.	This is the one the toddler tasted, and stated, ‘It tastes like purple.’ It was delivered with such conviction that we could hardly argue.
Onion flowers	Yes	Raw onion. Through and through.
Pansy	Yes	Faint salad leaf flavour.
Pea flower	Yes	Tastes like a sweet delicious pea. Which is what it would turn into if we gave it a chance.
Rose	Yes	There’s a bit of tannin, but the flavour is just a bit…unpleasant…	…Coat it in sugar or chocolate, on the other hand…!
Sage flower	Yes	Like sage. A bit sweeter maybe.	What would happen if you included the flowers in a burnt butter and sage sauce for some pumpkin gnocchi?
Strawberry flower	Yes	I forgot to take notes when I tasted it and I’m completely unwilling to pick another one and deny it the chance to turn into a strawberry.
Sweet pea	No		Don’t call it a pea if you can’t eat it. Seriously.
Viola	Yes	Pleasant. Pretty.

I guess now is a good time to mention the Deep Moral Dilemma that this Thing Worth Doing has raised for. Is it ethical to eat something that, given time, could offer far more as a food source than it does as a flower? Eating flowers that will turn into fruit, vegetables and legumes seems so devastatingly indulgent. When compared with what they offer when they are fully developed, these flowers offer little in terms of sustenance or nutrition. That being said, this peer-reviewed article is pushing for society to give a little more credit to flowers as a source of minerals in our diets.

Edible flowers in general (not just the ones that could go on to be fruits/veggies) might be seen to epitomise everything that's hedonistic and over-entitled about our society. How can we justify the use of agricultural land to grow flowers, instead of, say, actual food. Now, you may love your edible flowers and defend their right to be regarded as food, but you know what I mean. And when you start asking these questions, it naturally follows that you'll question the morality of growing all sorts of crops over others. Good luck with that. If this interests you, you could check out the Philosophy of Food Project by the Department of Philosophy and Religion at the University of North Texas. We don't necessarily endorse the views put forward by these folks, but if you've got the time and the inclination you could be knee-deep in the ethics of food before you're half way through your cup of tea.

Alright. Where are we up to? We've checked out our gardens, we've tasted what they had to offer, we've done some reading and we've decided that edible flowers, whilst are pretty and lovely, raise some hefty ethical questions.

Our next stop is to check in with some experts. We will be visiting a commercial grower of edible flowers and a local restaurant that showcases edible flowers in many of their dishes. So much to look forward to!

Tips from the Experts: Roger

5-time Senior Homecraft Sponge Sandwich Winner

A retired dairy farmer may seem an unlikely sponge master, but who can argue with five wins at the Bendigo Show? He's won a glass cake display stand each time, and each of the girls in his family have been given one. His youngest granddaughter is yet to get hers, so in the unlikely case that one of us beat him, we'll be giving our display plate to her.

Roger is a gentle man with a dry sense of humour; he was kind enough to cook a sponge while we took notes, but assured us that he would leave out something vital or add something in. It seems a bit cruel, but you can hardly blame him, given that we will be his (underqualified) rivals. We are left floundering about what's solid advice and what he's put in as a decoy.

Side note: Roger's wife, Glenys, is a steward at the show. With a resume this solid I don't know why they haven't gone into sponge consultancy. Glenys is an accomplished cook in her own right (toffee apples for the church fair!), but leaves the showing of sponges to Roger.

Roger's tips include:

• Separating the eggs is bullshit. (His words, not mine.)
• Warm the eggs by bathing them in hot water for a few minutes before cracking them.
• Beat the eggs on a medium speed for 18 minutes with a stand mixer.
• Use wheaten cornflour, and the brand of the ingredients is of no consequence.
• Custard powder in the recipe results in immediate dismissal by the judges.
• Measure out the cornflour then add an extra tablespoon full 'for the pot'. (What is this, a pot of tea? Oh well - who am I to argue?)
• Use a whisk to incorporate the dry ingredients. A whisk! 
• Grease tins with Copha after heating them up a little on the stove. Line the bottoms with baking paper.
• Weigh the mixture when it goes into the tins to ensure exact halves are achieved.
• Find the ideal height for the trays in your oven. Roger has them two spaces from the bottom of the oven but this will differ depending on your oven.
• Roger actively endorses tin-banging prior to putting sponges in the oven too. 
• When arranging the two sponge halves for showing, place the bottom half upside down on the plate and the top half right-way up. 

It so happens that Roger is a pretty philosophical character, and I'm glad we could spend time with him for this to surface. The take home message was that 'it doesn't pay to follow all the rules. You've got to make your own mind up.' This seems like good advice for making sponges in particular and for life in general.

The verdict: Wow. Never before have I come across a sponge with a texture this fine. It's something else entirely.

I can't wait to have a few more attempts before The Big One. I don't want to peak too early, but we have pure gold advice right here and we really want to do the competition justice. There's nothing worse than going in under-done, so to speak.

A massive thanks to Marion and Roger for welcoming us into their homes to share their tips. The cooking, the cuppas, and the chats were priceless, and it feels like the sponges are almost beside the point. We are left feeling a little bit smarter with our sponges (how can we gain in an hour and a half the wisdom these two have collected over decades?) and a big bit fuller in our hearts.

Tips from the Experts: Marion.

Adored Mum and Grandmother: Celebrated home cook. 

With a mixing spoon as worn as this, the lady must be taken seriously. Her fierce left hand can cream butter and sugar better than any machine.

Watching her bake is a joy. She's efficient, she's tidy and she doesn't bother measuring things exactly. She's so bloody clever that she doesn't need to. Mark us down as impressed.

The recipe is from a friend from a couple of decades ago and it's been making spot-on sponges regularly the whole time. It's written in her recipe notebook - so full and falling apart that only she would dare find the page it's on for fear of destroying the whole delicate, priceless artefact. The recipe doesn't mess about with melted butter or boiling water, the only flour it uses is cornflour and it requires that the cook separate the eggs.

Marion's tips for near-perfect sponges include:

• Use the biggest eggs you can buy. Grandma Carter used duck eggs, but any giant ones will do. If you're using eggs from your own chooks, give them a stern talking to about increasing their egg size.
• Make sure your eggs are room temperature, and separate them with the greatest of care. Broken yolks = unfathomable disaster.
• Beat eggs with handheld electric beaters. Standing there patiently is all a part of the ritual. Side note: the beaters are older than me, and have aged far more gracefully.
• Use a bowl with graduated sides. It's easier to fold in the flour.
• Scrape the edges and bottom of the bowl when folding in flour, and fold with a gentle and deliberate action, slowly spinning the bowl as you go.
• Weigh the two tins after dividing the mixture evenly to ensure perfectly equal halves. 
• Bang the tins a few times on the bench before putting them in the oven to remove the big bubbles.

Marion put the sponges in the oven for 15 minutes and we set about having a cup of tea. Like some sort of renegade, she opened the oven door when the timer went off, to see if they needed an extra 2 mins. After a quick and gentle prod with her forefinger it was decided they were ready. She expertly removed them from the tins onto a clean and pretty tea towel laid over the cooling rack. We promptly ate one half with our cuppa.

The verdict: feather-light and delicious with a fine, consistent texture.