As usual this time of year is our busiest.  So much to do and we are more than a little behind thanks to a cold, wet winter.  Planning our first menus of the season today I was inspired by a few things I found around the property.  More than ever this spring I’m going to be depending on the hearty plants that survived a brutal winter along with what is coming up spontaneously in our fields and forests.  Here’s a preview of what I’ll be working with soon in the kitchen…

Our purple cape cauliflowers we planned to harvest late last fall.  But they never matured. So we left them to overwinter and, hearty brassicas that they are,  they survived.  Dormant for months, now they are coming to life.  I’m thinking about purple cauliflower fritters for these beauties…..

 

For our Serra and Selva, which is a mix of foraged and cultivated herbs, vegetables, flowers and fruit I’ll use some wild calendula which is abundant right now.  We’ll be drying some of these flowers too for tea and tinctures……

We have tons of  wild veronica

Occhi della Madonna: Veronica Chamaedrys

 

These spicy micorgreens coming up in our green house will be perfect in a few days….

And to finish we’ll add some purple carrots that we overwintered as well as some fresh radish, beets, kale, wild pea shoots and rosemary flowers.