Category Archives: Salad

The first 2022 outside salad

Sorry for the silence here on the Edimentals blog. I’ve been busy preparing to produce signs and plant labels for the Allium garden and the World Garden as well as working on various KVANN (Norwegian Seed Savers) projects. However, I had to share the joy of making the first salad where all (25) plants were collected outside in the garden (we’ve been making salads from cellar ingredients all winter). The snow is now gone from most of the garden and the temperature rose to above 5C today which has stimulated a lot of early shooting edibles. No complete plant list, but the salad included various Alliums, Rumex, Dystaenia, Taraxacum, Arabis, Hablitzia etc.
The first outside edible flower of 2022 was a Primula veris subsp. macrocalyx.



20 years of Extreme Salads

20 years ago on 19th August 2001, the Extreme Salad (Man) was born when I made my first (of two) world record salads with 363 different plants and 382 ingredients (i.e., including flowers and leaves from the same variety). During last night’s garden tour, the occasion was marked by a 120 plant salad (1/3 the number of the 2001 salad)….and it was tasted by the participants! Although far from the world record, it was probably the fastest made extreme salad as I only had 30 minutes to collect the ingredients and 30 minutes to put it together before the participants arrived! The second picture below shows the only known picture of the original extreme salad!

Pål Theodorsen with the 2001 salad

5 years ago…on the 15th anniversary, I made this salad with my garden helper Josefine Marie Dichmann:


Other related links:

Link to the 2001 salad recipe :)
http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=206

Rejection letter from Guinness :)
http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=462

Stephen’s salad: a six part series following me around the garden collecting plants for a springtime extreme salad in mid-May, also fully indexed by plant names in the film description:
Part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvSB5cb_FXI
Part 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUiS0cOhASA
Part 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKmEJhSgp7g
Part 4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5mXiVd5u4A
Part 5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqYDlKqHEbs
Part 6 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BZGXsUR6hA




Celebration 40 genera salad

40 years ago this month I came to Norway to find a place for us to live as I was to start work at Institutt for kontinentalsokkelundersøkelser (IKU; Continental Shelf Institute) in Trondheim in October 1981. The flat I found was here in Malvik kommune (Torp). 
To celebrate 40 years in Malvik I made a salad with 40 different genera. The names of the genera are below the pictures!

The 40 genera:

  1. Begonia
  2. Anethum
  3. Salvia
  4. Lactuca
  5. Chrysanthemum
  6. Raphanus
  7. Apium
  8. Coriandrum
  9. Oxalis
  10. Tilia
  11. Tropaeolum
  12. Hablitzia
  13. Hosta
  14. Stellaria
  15. Alliaria
  16. Phyteuma
  17. Melissa
  18. Malva
  19. Lavatera
  20. Allium
  21. Lunaria
  22. Arabis
  23. Alchemilla
  24. Scorzonera
  25. Tragopogon
  26. Sanguisorba
  27. Campanula
  28. Primula
  29. Taraxacum
  30. Rumex
  31. Viola
  32. Lepidium
  33. Claytonia
  34. Ligularia
  35. Fragaria
  36. Osmorhiza
  37. Barbarea
  38. Hemerocallis
  39. Crambe
  40. Myrrhis

May 2021 Extreme Salad

The Extreme Salad Man was asked last night to make a salad…..but he only managed 55 in total. He blames the fact that he was only given an hour. Nevertheless, all were pleased with the result. He hopes you like it too! A full list of plants can be found at the bottom below the pictures.

 

Cowslip / marinøkleblom (Primula veris) hybrids (red and yellow flowers)
Himalayan water creeper (Houttuynia cordata)
Hosta sieboldiana (blanched shoots)
Allium humile (white flowered Chinese species)
Crow garlic (Allium zebdanense)
American land cress (Barbarea verna); flowers
Pink flowered dandelion / rosablomstret løvetann (Taraxacum pseudoroseum)
White flowered dandelion / Hvirblomstret løvetann (Taraxacum leucanthum)
Sea kale / strandkål (Crambe maritima); flower heads
Prairie bluebells (Mertensia lanceolata)
Tall bluebells (Mertensia paniculata)
Perennial kale / flerårige kål (Brassica oleracea); white flowered
Perennial kale / flerårige kål (Brassica oleracea); yellow flowered
Orpine / smørbukk (Hylotelephium)
Bistort / ormerot (Polygonum bistorta)
Curled dock / krushøymole (Rumex crispa)
Patience dock / hagesyre (Rumex patientia)
Sorrel / engsyre (Rumex acetosa) “Abundance” and “Belleville”
Egyptian onion / luftløk (Allium x proliferum)
Fragaria “Lipstick”
Great waterleaf (Hydrophyllum appendiculatum)
French sorrel (Rumex scutatus) “Silver Shield”
Ramsons / ramsløk (Allium ursinum)
Caucasian spinach / stjernemelde (Hablitzia tamnoides)
Cress / karse (Lepidium sativum)
Spiked rampion / vadderot (Phyteuma sativum)
Lady’s mantle / marikåpe (Alchemilla spp.)        
Spring Beauty (Claytonia virginica)
Sweet cicely / spansk kjørvel (Myrrhis odorata)
Douglas’ onion / Douglas-løk (Allium douglasii)
Perennial honesty / månefiol (Lunaria rediviva)
Few-flowered leek (Allium paradoxum var normale); flowers
Chicory / sikkori (Cichorium intybus)
Jack-go-to-bed-by-noon / geitskjegg (Tragopogon pratensis)
Korean Ligularia / koreanøkketunge (Ligularia fischeri)
Common wintercress / vinterkarse (Barbarea vulgaris)
Moss-leaved dandelion / mosebladet løvetann (Taraxacum sublaciniosum “Delikatess”)
Garlic mustard / løkurt (Alliaria petiolata)
Mustard greens / sennepsalat (Brassica juncea) “Giant Red”
Ground elder / skvallerkål (Aegopodium podograria)
Garden orach / hagemelde (Atriplex hortensis)
Allium karataviense; flower shoot and bud
Chives / gressløk (Allium schoenoprasum) “Black-Isle Blush”     
Large-flowered wakerobin / stortreblad (Trillium grandiflorum)
Anise-root (Osmorhiza)
Sea sandwort / sandarve (Honckenya peploides)
Mints (Mentha); 3 varieties
Allium nutans
Hosta spp.
Wild marjoram / bergmynte (Origanum vulgare)
Honesty / judaspenge (Lunaria annua)

The year’s first extreme salad

Half an hour “foraging” in the garden and half an hour in the kitchen and I can present the year’s first multi-species salad….54 different plants! Notable additions were dark-leaved sea kale (strandkål) and Hydrophyllum virginianum (at the bottom), moss-leaved dandelion and Hablitzia tamnoides (centre). Edible flowers included two begonias and Oxalis triangularis (grown inside) and the first oxlips and hybrids (hagenøkleblom)



Buzz Buttons

Serving a side-salad of leaves of Acmella (Spilanthes) oleracea is guaranteed to get the juices flowing and lead to a lively discussion at dinner… Widely known as the Toothache plant as chewing the leaves/flowers has an analgesic (numbing) effect: “Eating a whole flower bud results in a grassy taste, followed by an extremely strong tingling or numbing sensation and often excessive saliva production and a cooling sensation in the throat”. Hence also the alternative name Buzz Balls (the flower buds). I would describe the initial taste explosion as citrousy. It’s not true that you start frothing excessively from the mouth on chewing some leaves. 
:) The effect is due to the presence of spilanthol… 

I usually have a pot or two of this plant in my garden to give a bit of excitement to unsuspecting guests – they usually think I’ve poisoned them…. This is also a prime annual edimental as you can see in the picture from the Lund Botanical Garden in Sweden. However, it is unfortunate that slugs are mad on this plant and will quickly defoliate your plants if you turn your back! I therefore grow mine in pots so that I can keep them out of the reach of the slugs… This is a native of Brazil where it is commonly used in salads and it is also used as a green vegetable (cooking destroys the toothache effect). This album was stimulated by a post by Stine Syvertsen on the Planteklubben group when I first posted it on FB back in 2012. Stine wrote about this herb also being used in Madagascar where it is known as Anamalao. 

It grows well and sets seed most years with me…It is also used medicinally and is for example a traditional remedy to stammering! – it certainly stimulates the vocal chords is my experience! Another interesting use is that if you have a guest for dinner who doesn’t like chili, you don’t need to make a separate chili-free version of whatever you’re cooking, just give your guest a few Acmella leaves to chew first! 

The winter’s first salad shoot salad

The first winter shoots were harvested from the cellar today. It is almost totally dark in the cellar and currently about +6C. The blanched shoots in the picture are (from L to R) dandelions (løvetann), perennial kales (flerårige kål) and catalogna chicory (sikkori). Otherwise you can see Korean celery (Dystaenia takesimana), perennial celery / fool’s watercress (Apium nodiflorum), turnip (nepe) , carrot (gulrot)  and lemon balm (sitronmelisse).
The salad was decorated with Begonia flowers from the living room!