Edible Flowers

My mom is a fantastic gardener. She lines her house with beautiful flower gardens and maintains herb gardens next to my dad's vegetable garden. I'll post pictures of their house at a later date. They both use exclusively organic gardening techniques and my mom prides herself on all of her edible flowers. She brought over this bouquet of edible flowers today. Since it's still early in the spring, it's a mix of herbs and flowers (many flowers haven't bloomed yet).

If your mom doesn't bring you edible bouquets, you can buy small containers of edible flowers in some grocery stores. The flowers are usually with the fresh herbs in the produce section.

There are a few caveats to using edible flowers. A complete list can be found here. It's important that the flowers are grown organically and that you are certain that you are sampling the correct flower (some flowers can actually make you pretty sick).

I found a complete list of edible flowers here. You can also get out books from the library.

Using edible flowers as garnish or ingredient was really big in the 60's & 70's, so check thrift stores for books on cooking with flowers, too.

So what can you do with them?

freeze petals in ice cubes to serve with iced tea/water
sprinkle on top of salad
garnish desserts
add to roasted vegetables after they are cooked for flavor/garnish

I'll post some pictures as I use the flowers.