Tulips: For Spring Food and Beauty, Plant in the Fall – all original photos and 2 recipes
Yes, I eat tulips! I hope this post encourages you to plant tulips this fall. To remind you of their beauty, I'll show you some original photos I took this spring. And I’ll show you how I eat them, too!
I'm sorry you missed out on being able to read my post about eating tulips. I removed my content because Steemit's 30-day period of active comments has expired - and I want to be able to hear from you. If you are interested in eating tulips, let me know in the comments to one of the active posts on my Steemit page. I will be happy to re-post my article on request.
What Do You Think?
Have you ever eaten tulip flowers? If you have, how have you used them? What flavors have you noticed in the different varieties? If you haven't eaten tulip flowers, would you ever try them? If you do, I would sure like to read about it and get your taste review. Enjoy your tulips in the spring - if you plant them this fall!
Famined Dutchmen ate the bulbs in WWII.
@ocrdu - I heard about that .. so this could actually be eaten really.
@haphazard-hstead they do talk about it a great lot, I heard about it when I first came here and got my first tulip bouquet but the old folks who must have experienced it - never did - you're right - it's pretty a pretty sensitive matter to those who experienced it. Must have been traumatic. I've tried tasting one bulb not very tasty but maybe different when cooked. I tried out of curiousity
I got this one - it says black but it's more of purplish actually
but i love em
I have a friend in New Zealand and they've got tulips all growing there, too
and South Korea has imported a lot of Holland's tulips.
That's a pretty tulip! I think it's fun to try them all. I haven't found any bad-tasting ones. But the purple ones with the white fringe have an amazing clove flavor. That was a real surprise. Maybe we will see some tulip petals in your salads this spring! :D
I've never tried eating the bulbs. From the reading I've done, they are a real famine food. Some of the stories are heartbreaking. Many folks didn't prepare them right, or got varieties with bulbs that weren't OK to eat at all, and they paid the price. The rest of the folks suffered through them. I've read that folks in the Netherlands don't really like to talk about it, so I didn't mention it. But it is fascinating to me.
My grandparents never talked about it, but my parents (6 and 8 at the time) did. Many of the current generation have never heard of it. There were actual recipes in the newspapers for preparing them at the time. From what I understand, some kinds of bulbs were not all that bad to eat taste-wise, sweetish, as long as they were fresh. Older ones were dry and bitter. Maybe with some research you can come up with a whole new recipe for bulbs 8-).
That is so interesting. If you ever run across any recipes, I'd love to see them!
I don't think I'll be eating any tulip bulbs from the store - I bet some have a lot of 'preservatives' of some sort, against bugs, mold, or fungus. But I will think about this when I dig up a batch of tulips that have stopped blooming, because they have divided too much. It might be worth an experiment.
My husband, who is from the Netherlands father survived on tulip bulbs during WWll, he almost starved to death as a child. Beautiful pictures!
Thanks for your appreciation of my photos. The top two were growing at my neighborhood Post Office! Somebody there likes growing flowers and does a nice job of it.
As you can see in my reply to @ocrdu, I've read some about the Dutch eating their tulip bulbs to survive their WWII occupation. But it's hard to find many accounts. I wonder if your father-in-law would talk much about it. It's so underappreciated, at least by anyone I've ever met and talked with about eating garden flowers. But I know it's a difficult thing for people to want to recall. They went through really hard times. I wonder how he feels about tulips, in any way.
Jan Hendrik has passed but his wife is still alive, I will ask my husband and the family for his memories. You are right, he did not talk about this often, he loved and was very protective of his food and would eat anything as if he were starving. No one was allowed to touch his dinner plate! Which the kids tried often and would get stabbed with a fork.
It's fascinating to hear about family connections to specific plants like that. I hope you and your husband's family have some wonderful conversations. The people who lived those experiences won't always be here to share.
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That salad looks mighty tasty. This post made me hungry.
Thanks! I love my salads in the spring -- weeds, flowers, tree leaves. The choice of plants is so large and it changes from day to day. They are incredibly delicious!
Cool I didn't know you could eat parts of the tulip plant!
It's worth trying a few different kinds, since they do have different flavors. They are mild, but that's good for a mixed salad. If you ever try any, I'd appreciate your taste review!