Edible squash leaves

At one point I thought I had put up this information, but if so, I can no longer find it, so here it goes again!

Squash leaves and stems are among those foods that are not commonly eaten here in the USA in my area, but are quite common in other areas of the world. Below is a great link to a variety of recipes for preparing and cooking them: http://poorandglutenfree.blogspot.com/2013/08/what-to-do-with-squash-leaves-and-stems.html

Pacific Island Foods

As someone with a limited diet, I'm always interested in finding new foods I can eat, or finding new parts of foods or plants that I can eat.

This is a link to a series of leaflets on South Pacific foods and it's simply wonderful. Lots of recipes, but also lots of practical advice on how to prepare these foods from scratch, or use them in recipes. There is information on more common foods like pineapple, or foods that folks in the west may not be as familiar with, like rarer nuts or tubers.  Also some great information on food we don't eat here at all typically, but could - things like how to make and prepare fresh fig leaves, or the leaves from a chile plant or pumpkin, that sort of thing.

I totally recommend you check it out!

Sunflowers

We usually think of sunflowers as good producers for seeds. However, sunflowers - if you are growing them - are nearly entirely edible.

Roasted melon seeds

Winter squash are not the only gourds that have edible seeds. Many melons have them, too. You roast or pan fry these seeds and crack them open like sunflower seeds. In Egypt, watermelon seeds are a traditional snack food, actually!

So if you wish to try this snack out for yourself, here's how you do it.

Bell Pepper Seeds

So, all my life I've been chopping out the pith (the white part) and the seeds from my bell peppers before I eat or cook them.

Today, I'm looking at them and all of a sudden I'm thinking: why do I do that? I realize that this is simply habit rather than a knowledge of the inner workings of bell peppers. So I start to investigate.

Watermelon Rind

I've heard of pickled watermelon rind, that Southern specialty, but I never realized how many different ways you could use watermelon rind, or even what it actually is.

I suppose I always thought it was the part of the watermelon that was left over, but I was wrong. It's the pale green part of the watermelon, in-between the outer skin and the pink inner flesh. One has to cut off the outer, dark-green skin, after you've eaten the pink skin, and that will leave you with the rind to use in recipes.