Edible Buds

For a vegetable gardener, a flowering plant usually means an ending is nigh. The vegetable "bolts," then goes to seed and is no longer edible. Or at least not edible in the usual way. Our genius farmer friend Brett Grohsgal, being ever so resourceful as a farmer must, harvests the flowers from his bolting plants and sends them along in our weekly subscription packages.

Here you see the yellow flowers of the napini plant. Napini, like its cousin rapini, is a member of the brassica family, which includes cabbage, kale, collards, mustard and so forth. A distinguishing feature of these vegetables is the four-petaled flower they bear. It's usually yellow. But on the right in this picture are arugula flowers. They are white. All are edible. I add them to a salad and they give it the same peppery zest as the parent vegetables from which they bloom.