Eat that flower!

You might think it’s weird, but millions of people around the world will agree with me when I say that cooked squash blossoms are delish.

Now this is a relatively new belief of mine. As you might have noticed, I’ve been on a fabulous journey of trying new, healthy foods and cooking them in new, healthy ways. Wintergreen Organics is the vehicle getting me from point A (unhealthy and boring) to point B (healthy and novel). Who knew that squash blossoms would be part of the adventure?

When Zana at Wintergreen first asked if I liked these little flowers, I looked at her like she must have eaten the wrong kind of mushrooms or something. Seriously. Blossoms? I mean, isn’t that the kind of thing horses or cows eat? Or goats? Yeah, goats. They eat anything. I was about to tell Zana I wasn’t a goat, but she slipped the cup or so of blossoms into my produce box before I could open my mouth to say anything, sarcastic or otherwise. So there they were, pretty little orange-yellow flora that I was now obligated to cook because I can’t stand wasting food.

You would think I would have gone online and looked up recipes before I did anything else. But as much as I post recipes, I often don’t have the patience to follow them, especially when I am too curious to take the time to search for one and print it off. So I went right to experimenting.

Into the frying pan went my new favorite coconut oil. Off came the rough stems of the flowers. Into the colander and under running water went the blossoms and then, they, too, went into the frying pan. Then came the organic onion, something I did know all about. Peel, peel, chop, chop and there were the onion rings sizzling right next to the blossoms. A smattering of salt and poof. All I had to do was stir and wait.

The onions actually took longer to cook than the blossoms, which made me think I should have cooked those first if I wanted really soft onions and crisper blossoms. But it was fine, and after ten minutes, I was trying out the results of my experiment.

Amazing. The blossoms really tasted like squash! For some reason, I had been expecting something bitter or sour, but no, these things were mild, and even sweet because of the onion. I ate the lot and thought, wow. I will have to ask for more of these next time.

I’ve since done some reading about squash blossoms and other ways people cook them. They are popular deep fried with batter, baked with cheese and even thrown in soup. Some people put them on top of pasta and pizza, others put them in quesadillas and some just eat them raw. It seems that around the world, people are not opposed to eating flowers, which is really quite nice when you think about it. I mean, why waste the prettiest part of a plant, right?

Right.

Just agree with me and try it. Let me know what you think.