Rose-Petal Salad

Rose-Petal Salad
Serves: 4


2 Belgian endives, trimmed and separated into leaves
1 head of Bibb lettuce, torn into bite-size pieces, rinsed, and patted dry
1/4 cup pine nuts
pesticide-free petals of 4 mature pink roses
1/4 cup light olive oil
6 tablespoons raspberry vinegar
salt to taste
1. Divide the endive leaves among 4 chilled salad plates, arranging them decoratively, top with the Bibb lettuce, then sprinkle with the pine nuts and rose petals.

2. In a small bowl, whisk the olive oil into the vinegar and season to taste with salt. Drizzle the dressing over the salads. Serve immediately.

Rosy Cooler
Serves: 6 to 8


1 bottle rosé wine
strongly scented white and pink pesticide-free rose petals
1/4 cup vodka
raspberries to taste
ice cubes
1 quart carbonated mineral water or 7-Up
In a glass bowl, combine the wine and rose petals and chill for 1 hour. Add the vodka, raspberries, and lots of ice cubes. Chill for an ad***ional hour. Just before serving add mineral water.

Rose-Glazed Brie
Serves: about 12


1 15-ounce round Brie cheese, or similar cheese
pesticide-free rose petals, rinsed and patted dry to taste
1 envelope unflavored gelatin
1/4 cup cold water
2 cups dry white wine
1. Remove the rind from the top of the cheese, leaving a 1/2-inch border. Arrange rose petals on and around Brie wheel.

2. In a small bowl, soften gelatin in the 1/4 cup cold water for 5 minutes.

3. In a saucepan set over moderate heat, combine white wine with softened gelatin and heat, stirring, until gelatin is dissolved. Transfer to a bowl and let cool, stirring.

4. Gently brush flowers and cheese with gelatin mixture and chill until set. Serve with crackers.




Bueno Apatito

A Time to Blossom: Mothers, Daughters, and Flowers
In a preview of her upcoming book, Tovah Martin reflects on the role of gardening in her relationship with her mother.

Flowers weren't the biggest part of my childhood. Far more important were Barbie dolls and chocolate chip cookies, bicycles and hula hoops. Just like you, I spent most of my mornings dawdling over bowls of Cheerios, deciding whether I wanted to watch Captain Kangaroo or Spanky and Our Gang. Afternoons were devoted to balancing without training wheels and practicing cartwheels on the soft green moss under the trees. But flowers always seemed to slip in somewhere, forming the subtle background, punctuating the year.
I remember walking through the pantry on reconnaissance missions to discover what was in store for dinner and catching my mother in the midst of one of her slapdash table bouquets, tossing several blossoms willy-nilly into a vase and rushing them to the table moments before the roast came out of the oven. I remember standing at her elbow as she sowed seeds indoors and "helping" as she transplanted the tender little seedlings into nursery beds. I remember the pains she took with her rosebushes, dressed for combat in long gloves, long sleeves, denim pants, and a broad-brimmed hat. I remember the histrionics that ensued when my bunny nipped all her tulips in the bud. My mother and I spent lots of time together, feeding ducks at the park, reading on the front porch, but the garden was the setting where we reached our deepest understandings. That's where I saw my mother without her makeup and high heels, that's where we became partners in crime. So, needless to say, there was much fidgeting and plenty of looking and longing out the window while I waited for spring to get under way each year.
Patience is not a concept that is grasped early in our lives. Subtlety wi also a notion absent from one's vocabulary until later years. And that's why spring was right up my alley. You could push spring. You could slip a few crocuses and snowdrops into the sunny spot on the south side of your foundation, and up they'd pop the day after the snow melted. You could plant peas hours after you nagged your father into working the soil, rolling in the freshly turned earth until you were caked like the spaniel down the street. And then dig around in the spot a few days later to find little fishtails on the sprouts. You could go outside, push away the leaves, and discover flowers on the lungwort weeks before anything else was in blossom. Or run down to the garden center, load the car with little things already in blossom, and plop them into the beds. No one need know that you'd cheated Mother Nature. If you did it right, if you stuffed those beds so full of pansies that no telltale space remained between plants, no one would realize that those saucy little faces were sitting on supermarket stands rather than struggling through the cold, soggy soil in your front flower beds a few days ago. It was a pact of secrecy that you shared with your mother. Spring was when mothers and their children began a conspiracy that lasted throughout the growing season. When your father came home from work to a garden miraculously full of blossoms, your lips were sealed.


ANGELICA

A Rose Is a Rose Is a Meal
By Vithoon Amorn
BANGKOK (Reuters) - Fancy a bowl of white plumeria flowers with deep-fried rose petals? Or perhaps a Thai tulip omelet and a milkweed salad to go?
These are just some of the delights served up at a one-day food festival organizers hope will inject even more color into Thai cuisine.
``My goal is to see Thai hotels putting more flowery food on their menus and to encourage schools to include flowers in cooking classes,'' said art instructor Penpan Sittitrai, organizer of the non-profit event at the four-star Fortune Hotel.
``This is the first show anywhere in the world devoted to promoting flowers as...food,'' said the energetic 76-year-old, a long-time believer that flowers are not just for decoration.
Judging by the crowds gathered to see the work of top professional and amateur chefs from all over Thailand, there was lots of interest in the flowery fare but culinary experts say it will be some time before it gets on to menus.
``We enter this...to see how we compare with others. If the response is encouraging and our hotel guests like them, we would put them on our menus in the future,'' said Chef Isara Eam-eak, of Bangkok's SC Park Hotel.
Thai orchids and other flowers have long been a tourist favorite but Penpan and others say much more can be made of the country's flora.
``SAFE TO EAT''
``My father in northeast Thailand used to teach me that if it is safe for birds and monkeys to eat, it should be safe for human beings,'' she says.
``We are turning to rural Thai knowledge on indigenous flowers and plants. Why don't we use flowers for food in the same extensive way as we use herbs. Flowers also have herbal value.''
Apart from plumeria, a strong-smelling white flower found in almost every Thai garden, other popular 'foods' at the show included pink roses, marigolds and red marsh flowers, all turned into fancy dishes or used to decorate more tra***ional dishes.
But not all the recipes were homegrown.
Harano Mayumi, a former teacher of tra***ional Japanese flower arranging now living in Thailand, had sakura flowers flown in from her homeland especially for the event.
``I might open my own restaurant someday,'' said the 44-year-old, as she passed on tips on how to make sakura-wrapped sushi, Vietnamese spring rolls stuffed with assorted flowers and pandan leaf custard.
``I miss my hobby after having lived here for six years. In Japan, I used to teach flower setting and create backgrounds for TV shows and commercials,'' she said.
And if things take off, who knows the potential of flowery food, says arts specialist Maneerat Sawasdiwat Na Ayutthaya.
Beside boosting the tourism industry, one of the country's main sources of foreign exchange, they would be a welcome ad***ion to Thailand's export-led economy, she says.
``We should aim at adding value to flowers that have so long been taken for granted, they're not just something thrown away from the vase in the living room,'' Manerrat said.
``Making flowery food an export product is not a far-fetched idea, given the growing popularity seen for Thai food in foreign countries in recent years...it would make more sense to turn to the natural resources waiting for us to tap.''

Despair is not Hopeless!​