I was going to post an album of pictures showing off all the late flowers in the garden this record-breaking mild autumn still without any frost, but as they’re all edible I made a salad instead! There were 33 different edible flowers (see the list below the pictures) plus 30-40 greens and a whopper carrot which I decided to keep whole as a feature! It was cut up when the salad was tossed afterwards. It has a story too as it is one of the Danish accessions rematriated from Seed Savers Exchange (SSE) in the US last winter. I took a few seed before sending the rest on to Danish Seed Savers (Dansk Frøsamlerne). It’s called Kämpe which means Giant in Swedish/Danish (I call it Whopper as it’s probably the biggest/thickest carrot I¨’ve grown here). It’s not a very old variety and SSE informed that it was a cultivated variety originally from the Swedish seed company Weibulls. Anyone know more about it? Salad flowers, all harvested from the garden Salvia (blackcurrant sage / solbærsalvie) Fuchsia magellanica Hemerocallis “Stella de Oro” Taraxacum spp. (dandelion / løvetann) Rubus fruticosus (blackberry / bjørnebær) Papaver somniferum (opium poppy / opium valmue) Viola altaicum Campanula persicifolia (peach-leaf bellflower / fagerklokke) Sonchus oleraceus (common sow-thistle / haredylle) Glebionis coronaria (chopsuey greens / kronkrage) (3 varieties) Daucus carota (carrot / gulrot) (unopened flower umbel) Geranium sanguineum (bloody cranesbill / blodstorkenebb) Brassica oleracea (kale / grønnkål) Oenothera biennis (evening primrose / nattlys) Begonia Malva moschata (musk mallow / moskuskattost) (white and pink flowered) Malva alcea (hollyhock mallow / rosekattost) Monarda fistulosa (wild bergamot / rørhestemynte) Monarda “Elsie Lavender” Calendula officinalis (pot marigold / ringblomst (2 varieties) Campanula trachelium (nettle-leaved bellflower / nesleklokke) Calamintha nepeta (lesser calamint / liten kalamint) Tropaeolum majus (nasturtium / vanlig blomkarse) (2 varieties) Pisum sativum (garden pea / ert) Origanum spp. (wild marjoram / bergmynte) (2 varieties) Campanula lactiflora Alcea rosea (hollyhock / stokkrose) Tragopogon pratensis (Jack-go-to-bed-at-noon / geitskjegg)
5 years ago this week, I made a salad with 140 ingredients all harvested locally without using any additional energy than is available in my house and cellar (no greenhouse; no freezer; no fermenting; no plastics involved). This was well planned as I had been asked to provide a salad and other ingredients for a 10-15 course 4 hour dinner at the now Michelin star Credo restaurant in Trondheim in collaboration with the Kosmorama film festival (the main theme was films about food and Michael Pollan’s film in Defense of Food was shown).
The 11 categories of ingredients included in this salad, how it was planned so that everything was available in early March, and the recipe can be read about on my blog here: https://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=10214
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:
After I made my extremest salad in 2003 with 537 ingredients, I sent a press release to various Norwegian and other magazines. The only one that published an article was an article written by Lena Israelsson in a Swedish magazine, at least that’s what I remembered until I found this article when clearing my office in, fittingly (as I’ve just returned from there), Canadian Gardening under the title Hortus Trivialus (salad bar none) ;)
With the fantasy salad queen from Naturplanteskolen on a visit to Malvik’s Extreme Salad Man, we just had to combine forces and created a diversity salad for dinner..and with the mild weather, we managed 56 different salad plants “foraged”, all outside from the garden……not bad for 1st January at 63.5N!!
Perennial vegetables, Edimentals (plants that are edible and ornamental) and other goings on in The Edible Garden
