This week I harvested the beetroots and being more or less 100% self-sufficient in vegetables, seasonal food is the thing! My favourite way to use beetroot (both red, yellow and white cultivars) is to make vegetarian beetroot burgers (patties), known in our household as blood burgers! The beetroot is first steamed (I used the wood stove), then grated and mixed together with fried Egyptian onions (luftløk) bulbs and garlic with Himalayan balsam / kjempespringfrø (Impatiens glandulifera) seed. Chili, salt and pepper and golpar /ground seed of any Heracleum / hogweed species (instead of cumin) are then mixed in with eggs and 100% wholegrain emmer wheat flour (or any other grain) to bind the patties. Finally, we fried the patties in butter! Good wholesome slow harvest food!
From left to right: Boltardy and Rhondda, Albino white and Cylindra!
Allium x proliferum / Egyptian onion (luftløk) bulbs
Tonight’s veggie pizza (with part of the bread dough as I’m also baking bread this evening) had some unusual for me ingredients: perennial kales, a mix of oriental brassicas (pak choy, mizuna, mustard greens etc.), various spring onions (all hacked out of the frozen soil) with garlic, chili, oregano, dried fungi – Albatrellus ovinus (fåresopp in Norwegian) and topped with dried seed of highly invasive himalayan balsam (kjempespringfrø), the seeds of which are quite attractive (see the picture)
Long-tongued Bombus consobrinus (lushatthumle) which almost exclusively feeds on Aconitum has turned up in the garden over the last few days on Himalayan balsam / kjempespringfrø (Impatiens glandulifera).
Thanks to Tor Bollingmo for the ID (he tells me, he’s not seen this species on Impatiens before).
I’m still alive and well after last night’s noxious pizza. I’ll explain. I used pea shoots from the living room, onion, Allium cernuum shoots harvested from the garden (I forgot to include Hablitzia shoots), garlic and chili…on top of the pizza, I added seed of Himalayan balsam (Impatiens glandulifera), one of the “worst” noxious (invasive) species…
Pea shoots grown in soil on the window sill in the living room
Allium cernuum leaves can be harvested year round even when it’s -10C in the middle of the day as it was yesterday!
Allium cernuum, Chicago onion, Nodding onion (Prærieløk)
I used a whole grain emmer, spelt, rye sourdough base to the pizza (much more tasty and nutritious than standard pizza dough)
A bit overdone…the oil rich brown noxious himalayan balsam (kjempespringfrø) can be seen on top.
..I forgot the Hablitzia shoots (also fun to harvest fro the garden when it’s very cold!)
Himalayan balsam (kjempespringfrø) was the noxious element of the pizza….the seeds were used. Here from July along the Monk’s Brook in my home town Eastleigh, Hampshire!
Perennial vegetables, Edimentals (plants that are edible and ornamental) and other goings on in The Edible Garden
