BAKING WITH FLOWER

Old Mother Frugal began scratch cooking when Mother’s Little Helpers were young children.  It provided them with hand-eye coordination skills, academic skills about fractions with measuring cups and it was a fun activity for quality time with them.

One of the earliest lessons for each of them was baking with flour.

Initially, they thought flour was that fragrant smelling plant with petals growing outdoors in nature.  It came as quite a surprise for them to learn about the other kind of flour.  The one that when water was added to it, became pasty like glue.

However, it wasn’t until adulthood that Old Mother Frugal herself learned about cooking with their type of flower. The kind one can pick while foraging.

If you are not familiar with foraging, it would be gathering food provisions, usually plants or fruits, found outdoors growing in nature.

Old Mother Frugal grew up as a city girl and existing outdoors with nature was not a concept endearing to me. This could explain my previous blog entries about my failure as an unproductive farmer.

However, foraging intrigues the frugal cook within me.  Although still too timid to trust anything found in the woods provided by Mother Nature, recent foraging in my own garden, at the recommendation of a friend, proved to be a successful experiment in meal preparation. I could identify the item; no harmful chemicals were sprayed on them and they were ripe for picking.

They were zucchini blossoms!

A quick Google search on zucchini blossom preparation revealed a delicate meal could be served in less than ten minutes.  Old Mother Frugal had the ingredients in the pantries such as ricotta, parmesan cheese, black pepper and nutmeg. They take 3-5 minutes to bake in the oven at 375 degrees. 

Since they came from my own garden, they were free and most importantly, they were delicious!

SOUND THE BUGLE!  Today’s tip: Be open to offer your palette new tastes. When trying to maintain a frugal budget, free food can offset a month when there is more month than money.