Tuesday eating from your yard tip~wild violet leaves and flowers are edible. Euell Gibbons called wild violets nature’s vitamin pill because the flowers and leaves are packed with vitamin C and the leaves have more vitamin A than commercial greens. Besides being nutritious the flowers make a lovely edible garnish on salads, soups, desserts and drinks. The flowers are also beautiful frozen in ice cubes or rings. The trick is to fill the container 1/2 full with water and float the flower on top then after that has frozen top it off with water. This way the flower stays suspended in the middle of the ice instead of floating to the top. Before commercial food coloring, dark purple violet flowers were used to color food. There are endless possibilities for purple tinged violet simple syrup over fruit or shaved ice, in alcohol, homemade marshmallows and other desserts. Karalyn Neville candies the flowers by painting egg whites on the flowers and sprinkles them with sugar then allows them a day to dry. You can also wilt the greens in a stir fry or add them to your baked egg dishes. We can’t forget violet jelly and violet infused vinegar. One I haven’t tired, but I am including in hopes that one of my brewmeister friends might give it a whirl, Mrs. Grieve notes in A Modern Herbal that the Romans made wine from the sweet violet flowers. As a last note my friends be forewarned violets are like the mythological Greek Sirens whose beautiful song drove the sailors to distraction until they crashed into the reefs. Violets are so beautiful in the spring that you can’t bring yourself to pull them. Later in the season the little deceptor shoots bazillions of seeds in an attempt at world domination, so it is in your best interest to eat them! How do you eat violets?
