Flower Power

  • July 1, 2017

Edible flowers add bursts of colour to your summer meals

At last, summer is in full bloom and so are we. Flowers add to the beauty of it all, but they can also help us beat the heat.

When the heat gets to be too much we can experience a flushed face, headache, and feelings of heatstroke. To help alleviate this, a delicious summer tea can be made of dried white chrysanthemum petals. While these can often be found in any Asian food store, 4 Good Tea in Charlottetown offers high quality, organic chrysanthemum, as well as many other flower teas.

Fresh flowers add extra decadence to a sweet treat.// Photo Credit: Christine Gallant, Sweet Things (Summerside)

Fresh nasturtiums, pansies, and chive flowers are delicious additions to a cooling summer salad, bringing gorgeous colour and flavour as well. The pungent quality of the cute purple chive flowers also helps open the pores and induce sweating, which in turn helps us cool down. Weedy Gardens at the Charlottetown Farmers’ Market offers these as a bonus in their salad mix.

Wild rose petals can be gathered along the North Shore of PEI for their distinctive flavour and scent. Traditionally, rose petal tea has been used to help thwart sore throats, diarrhea, and irregular periods, but it is also just yummy. Make sure not to boil too long, or be tempted to use garden variety hybrids. Rose water is a flavour used in Persian cuisine, but its astringent quality is also great for reducing inflammation of capillaries when applied to the skin.

Ice cream is the traditional PEI treatment for heat. To add flower power to this effective remedy consider a homemade, flower-infused recipe such as honey lavender ice cream or vanilla rose ice cream—the internet abounds with irresistible recipes.

If eating flowers just isn’t your thing, you can simply nourish your soul with Ariana Salvo’s fresh-cut flower CSA and drink the beauty in through your eyes all summer.

 

Flower petals add a burst of colour to any food.//Photo credit: Ariana Salvo

About Harmony Wagner

Harmony Wagner began training with the North American Tang Shou Tao Association and her teacher Vince Black in 1996. She underwent a formal apprenticeship with the Four Winds Health Center and was licensed as a Registered Acupuncturist through the CTCMA of British Columbia in 2001. She practices Traditional Chinese Medicine and teaches NATSTA gongfu and qigong in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada.

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