One of the joys of spring is traditional Norwegian Karvekaalsuppe (caraway green soup), last night’s dinner. This was one of the first wild plants I domesticated in my garden for the soup, leaving some for seed later (used on bread, in curry spice mixes, ferments etc.). I simply collected a large bowl full of leaves with the top of the roots attached. I then made a butter and wholegrain Svedjerug (old Norwegian rye flour) roux with garlic, water and caraway greens, adding a hard boiled egg to the soup…
Learn much more about this great multipurpose vegetable in my book Around the World in 80 plants!
I’ve never seen real bread for sale, you can tell from the weight. The loaves I made yesterday weighted in at over 1.5kg! This sourdough was made from a selection of whole grain organic flours (yesterday’s pizza dough was taken from the proving dough) including: coarse rye, emmer, barley, coarse spelt, svedjerug and a few barley and svedjerug grains and fresh ground elder (skvallerkål) mixed in at the end!
At least the ground elder and seed toppings were home grown, from left to right – caraway (karve), opium poppy (opiumvalmue) and greater plantain (groblad) / Plantago major
At the moment there are many of these tiny red so-called velvet mites (probably Trombidium holosericeum) crawling around hunting on open soil and compost in the garden. I knew almost nothing about them, but just discovered that the larvae attach themselves to spiders, harvestmen and insects as in this picture…I’d seen this before in the garden but hadn’t realised before! See https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cc/Phalangium_opilio_bl.JPG/1024px-Phalangium_opilio_bl.JPG
Perennial vegetables, Edimentals (plants that are edible and ornamental) and other goings on in The Edible Garden
