I went looking for what else a sunflower can do besides feed birds

I went looking for what else a sunflower can do besides feed birds and it turns out chefs have been quietly ahead of me on this. Daniel Humm at Eleven Madison Park cooks sunflower heads as a signature dish. Sean Sherman braises them in The Sioux Chef's Indigenous Kitchen. Alan Bergo makes capers out of unopened flower buds from all kinds of plants, and his whole point is that a caper was never about one Mediterranean vine, it is about a tight unopened bud and what you do to it.

So I picked buds before they cracked open and put up four jars. Each one got salt, a splash of ACV, a splash of LABS serum, garlic, onion, and lemon. Then I split them by herb. Lemon basil flowers, Thai basil flowers, midnight basil flowers, and rosemary. Everything pushed under the brine, plastic wrap and a rubber band on top, and into the dark to do its thing.

Four jars, one variable. That is the whole experiment. In a few weeks I will know which herb actually belongs with a sunflower bud instead of guessing.

#fermentation #sunflowers #wildfoods #permaculture #homesteadkitchen