Fair Farro

 

Want to celebrate spring with edible plants? Try this amazing Spring Farro Salad, with the freshest of spring greens and edible flowers paired with shelf-stable ingredients like jarred artichoke hearts and farro, an ancient grain loved by the Egyptians and Romans. In fact, farro is an overarching name for three grains from which wheat evolved: farro piccolo (einkorn), farro medio (emmer), and farro grande (spelt).

 

 

 

And here are four more satisfying farro recipes: https://www.npr.org/2013/10/02/227838385/farro-an-ancient-if-complicated-grain-worth-figuring-out

 

When cooking farro, be sure you know if your product is semi-pearled, pearled, or whole grain with the bran intact. The latter needs to be soaked overnight before cooking.

 

Another delicious spring farro salad has been created by Whole Grains Council/Oldways. Find the recipe here.

A Biblical Vegetarian

 A Biblical Vegetarian

By After Briton Rivière - Manchester City Art Gallery, Public Domain

In the Old Testament Book of Daniel, the visionary and prophet who was taken to Babylon to serve at the court of Nebuchadnezzar with three other young men, refused to eat the rich food and wine of his captors and called for a diet of vegetables and water instead. But his guards were afraid that the four men would start looking unhealthy on such a diet and the king would notice this and have the guards punished.

 

Daniel asked the guards to grant his wish for a vegetarian diet for 10 days and then see if there was any appearance of undernourishment. The guards were surprised that he and his friends looked healthier and better nourished than any of the other young men at court after the trial period.

 

Those of us who would like to follow Daniel’s example are discouraged when we survey the veggies on offer at the typical grocery store.  Even natural food stores carry a disappointingly small range of edible plants. About a week ago, the New York Times published an article lamenting that kale is “so 2010.” 

 

But it goes on to explain that the 15-year-old company Adaptive Seeds offers 14 different types of kale seeds, some of them blends and crosses. The company started when Sarah Kleeger and her partner Andrew Still journeyed to nine Northern European countries with climates similar to the U.S.’s, returning with 800 different varieties of vegetable seeds not commercially available here.

 

Some of the kales include showy ones like North Star Polaris, a ferny kale, and Bear Necessities, which looks like seaweed. Adaptive Seeds’ catalog also offers jewels like Transylvanian sorrel, salad burnet, bladder campion, alexanders, stalkless celeries, orach, and a lettuce called Doucette d’Alger.

 

Brassicas are the plants that give twice. Biennial, they will sprout again about this time in the spring with asparagus-style sprouts that have flower buds on them, called “raab”. These are even more prized than the original crop.

 

Are grains like amaranth and quinoa vegetables? Adaptive Seeds classifies them so because of their edible leaves. Plus, they are so beautiful that Kleeger calls them “edible ornamentals or edimentals.” If you have a subscription to NYT, you can read more here.