Is it Flowerburger Time yet?

Everything is starting to blossom. Including me.

A million years ago the photo above could have been my own flower-clad legs and playful clunky orange shoes. When flower-power, along with Mary Quant and Biba fashions blossomed onto my teenaged scene, I knew I had met my future style: awash in flowers, one bright hue after another, preferably as many together as possible. This was what adulthood was going to look like! I was gonna be cloaked in flowers from now, until forever!

And then: I discovered YOU CAN EAT FLOWERS! So far I had spent a childhood sucking the nectar from the stems of honeysuckle blossoms that grew along the driveway of my grandparents’ house, from the street, past the house, all the way to the back where the once garage now pickled storage building was, right before you got to the garden. I had been told that the little sweet-smelling flowers were okay to nibble at; but no one had ever told me that there were other flowers, and that many of them (but not all—be very careful) were edible. Some were delicious. All: so pretty.

I trotted off into adulthood, to Israel, London, Paris, San Francisco, Berkeley, in my short little flower dress, chubby legs in bright tights, teetering on vividly coloured platform clogs, with—of course, you know: flowers in my hair. I could always find flowers for my hair.

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Flowerburger, in Memory of Richard Brautigan

"Baudelaire opened up a hamburger stand in San Fran, but he put flowers between the buns. People would say gimme a burger w/plenty of onions. Baudelaire’d give ‘em a flowerburger instead"—the poem: Flowerburgers, by Richard Brautigan

I became a huge fan of Brautigan; his simple observations moved me. So of course, I nearly fainted when he walked up to husband number one and myself one afternoon somewhere in Berkeley. Hubs #1 was connected with everyone who was doing anything artistically; at the moment and in the recent past. We would be out just chilling and out of the blue one of the days absolute legends would appear, walk by saying: “Hi David”, stop and chat a bit. And there I was, simply amazed.

Brautigan’s poems/collections of poems were clever, thoughtful, tender. Sometimes I felt as he used words in a way that he could almost taste them. Like an ingredient. I looked forward to reading his poetry whenever they were published; it was devastating when he took his life. And like the almost still-child I was at the time I reacted so selfishly: who would I be, going forth in life without his wry, painfully and beautifully and simple heartfelt observations?

But Brautigan left me his flowerburger, and he left it to you as well: Remember: “plenty of onions”. Of course. And also remember: plenty of flowers, too. PS: this tasty, sloppy, beautiful burger is vegetarian—a flowerburger just wouldn't seem right created from meat. It does have eggs and cheese, so if you are vegan, adapt as you normally would.

You can eat a wide variety of flowers; they are so beautiful. Surprisingly, not all of them taste as sweet as they look. Some, like the nasturtium, which is related to watercress, tastes downright: cressy. Almost spicy. And most importantly: some flowers are toxic and should never be eaten. I would consult the internet for a definitive listing.

Flower Burger

400 g/14 oz canned red kidney beans, plus its liquid from can

150g/ 1 cup uncooked/dry couscous

1 stock cube, crumbled

1 onion, chopped

3 tablespoons tomato paste/puree

3 cloves garlic, chopped

¼ green pepper, chopped

½ carrot, shredded

2 eggs

1 teaspoon cumin, or more to taste

¼ teaspoon dry ginger

½ teaspoon mild chile powder or smoked paprika

Large pinch oregano leaves, crushed

½ cup chopped coriander leaves, coarsely cut up

1-2 tablespoons breadcrumbs

Salt to taste—start with ½ teaspoon

Black pepper to taste

2 tablespoons olive oil, or as needed

6 slices cheese such as Emmenthal, Gouda

To Serve:

Soft buns (ie hamburger buns), handfuls of fresh unsprayed nasturtiums; plus any condiments you love in addition: mayonaise, mustard, ketchup, sliced onions, pickles, tomatoes; no lettuce, as you have the leafiness of the nasturtium flowers.

METHOD

In a bowl, combine the beans and their juice with the couscous and the stock cube. Leave for at least 30 minutes or until the couscous has absorbed the liquid.

Blend mixture until its chunky-smooth, then add the onion, tomato puree, garlic, green pepper, carrot, and egg, mixing well.

Season with cumin, ginger, chile powder, oregano and coriander leaves; mix well, then add the breadcrumbs and mix this in well, too. The crumbs should help bind the ingredients together

Refrigerate for about 30 minutes to firm up.

Form “burgers” from the mixture; it will fall apart easily, unlike meat burgers, so will need to be handled gently.

Heat the oil in one or two nonstick frying pans (recipe makes about 6 patties) and when hot, add the burgers and cook for about 7 minutes or until browned, then turn over and brown the other side for about 7 minutes. Do not turn over and over again, as they will fall apart.

Top each burger with a slice of cheese, cover the pan, and let the heat or the pan melt the cheese. Alternately you may have the heat on low while the cheese melts (Because of the sugars in the tomato puree, the mixture may burn easily).

Serve each melted cheese topped burger patty on a split bun, each side spread with a little mayonnaise, mustard and ketchup as desired, and onions, tomatoes, pickles and nasturtiums. Close up and eat right away, though I like some of the flowers poking out, just a bit, from the edges. It reminds me that it is truly a flower-burger.

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So anyhow, here we are, decades later, and a trawl through the internet this morning unearthed these utterly beautiful flower burgers Some ideas are just too wonderful to go out of style.

“Founded in 2015 in Milan by Matteo Toto, Flower Burger…serves “colourful vegan burgers in…Italy, France, USA, UK and Netherlands…all “produced…without use of additives…”. They are so pretty, my kitchen is begging me to return for another bout of flower mania experimentation.

@flower_burger_uk@flower_burger

And its just the beginning of flower season.

The past several years have been so difficult and so grim for just about everybody, most places, in different ways, that I, for one, just want to be at one with the garden. With the blossoms—so soothing, so uplifting.

I watch the unfolding of the tulip petals, the narcissi, the crocus, smell my way to the little white blossoms of wild onions that grow along the forest path, pat nasturtium seeds into the warm earth and water them faithfully; check the rosebuds to see how they are doing (rose petals are beautiful, fragrant, food garnish, plus they make amazing jam). [One of the many treats you can enjoy your rose jam in: Raspberry and Rose Ice Cream Float: raspberry swirl/ripple ice cream; lemon/lime soda, handful of fresh raspberries and a spoonful of homemade rose petal jam.]

Once again I feel like a flower spirit, everything is blossoming, like I’m sampling nature like a buzzing bee, flitting from one blossom to the next. In reality, I feel that way in the kitchen too.

So, when I came across this photo of flower-stuffed Vietnamese spring salad rolls in a facebook group, Home, Garden and DIY. I felt so uplifted. They are so pretty, I wanted to share them with you.

beautiful rolls by Barb Abelin

You can use most any recipe for Vietnamese salad rolls you find on the internet; the important thing is to lay the edible flowers onto the softened rice paper, so that they show through like stained glass once they are rolled up. I like to fill the insides with first/marinated/fried tofu, shredded carrots, cucumbers, spring onions, with par boiled thin rice noodles laid down to keep it all in place when you wrap it up. I like to include fresh herbs such as mint leaves, Vietnamese basil, butter lettuce, along with the flowers too helping them form a mosaic when rolled.

There is one flower-based treat from my past I often search for in shops and in my travels, especially after my accident when I was seeking things to smell that might actually SMELL to me, that might pull me back into life.

Its orange flower jelly, a sparklingly pale jelly with several tiny white orange blossoms floating, suspended in its sweet depths. I fell in love with this jelly when my brother’s then wife, Shahla, gave me a pretty jar-full as a gift. She and her family had fled Iran Its scent was like standing under my grandfather’s orange tree: full of sweet-smelling sun-warmth. And unlike my grandfather’s tree, the orange flower jelly does not have bees, so you can enjoy your taste. Its very rare to find in shops; sometimes I do in Persian food shops, but even when I find them, they are usually too sweet and orange-y rather than light and fragrant. I have tried making it myself, to no avail, but probably this is because I do not have access to fresh orange flowers. Someday I will again (I keep telling myself). In the meantime, if you see a jar of sparklingly clear pale golden jam on a shop shelf, give it a try. And if its really wonderful, please oh please let me know!

Meanwhile, on my flower trail, the internet is posting the most beautiful flower-strewn pastas: made with all natural colours from vegetables, the dough is applied almost like appliques, then rolled thinly as you roll the pasta, forming the pattern of flower! So beautiful!

cooking with Fiona

Its late March now; tomorrow morning I’m going to visit the forest and see if the one wild cherry tree has blossoms; if it does, I’m keen to salt them, Japanese style.

And as each day grows longer, more hours of sunshine, brighter, stronger sun rays, the flowers bloom. Some die soon in the season, but they are replaced by more blossoms. Our rosemary is in blossom now, tiny purple flowers along the deep green spiky stems. We have months to look forward to. The chive flowers, little pom-pom-like balls of lavender fluff. There are elderberry trees getting ready to pop our their sweet-smelling flowers, which I keep meaning to turn into cordial and never get around to it, and when June hits, the roses here in our little corner of England go insane. And then the nasturtiums, and when the vegetables start to grow, they too have flowers. Last year we spent months eating zucchini blossoms—every day and in every way, truly every way, unless I discover something new this year. You never know.

I guess the flowers are especially joyous this year: they come to us from an earth that is warming from the cold. They speak to us of beauty, simple, complex flowers, the beauty of a future, the beauty of now. We are all about flowers right now, Alan, myself, and little Lambchop. Each day we wake up, we can smell them on the air, wander around the garden, the hood, the forest, noticing new flowers, new patches of blossoms, trees with their branches covered in new blooms. And for a short time, a day, an hour, a moment, anxiety is held at bay. And we can simply appreciate, enjoy and feel grateful for, the flowers.