After an unusually cold winter, NC is tasting spring. The Viking Experience is gearing up for another weekend. Outdoor music concerts. College basketball games on Sunday afternoon tv. The fairgrounds are hosting tons of different shows and events back-to-back. It’s nice.
Got a late 80s/early 90s clothing vibe walking around. Expect to see small print flower dresses making a comeback with edible flowers. Our local museum does Artists in Bloom with florists. I keep expecting them to expand to gourmet food for their gift shop. French flowers and gardens do well in the US and they have a long history of putting flowers in all their food, including 4-star salads. Violets which taste like fresh peas can be candied for 3-4 months simply by dipping them in egg whites and brushing them with powdered sugar. Amaranth is a brilliant red American flower. Its grain can be turned into popcorn. Fried white yucca flowers are another traditional snack. 400+ other edible flowers spring to mind. You can really see some American movie stars and tourism venues digging into local flowers with automated wind tunnels and greenhouses that are growing out of abandoned freight trailers and other commercial spaces. Or just selling $100-200 models for apartment kitchen windows. Maybe some magazine food editors will team up with photographers to put out their own salad extras food lines. Or books.
Someone is going to do a modern remake of Julia Childs for hydroponic salad gardens and sell them to 30+ soccer moms just like pilates and other health crazes over the decades. The only question is when. But before any commercial real estate gets snapped up to be converted to high-end organic MAHA restaurants, someone needs to start a few cooking shows and basic education about different salads and what to look for. Me? I’m going to go look at a few more herb flowers and ask if they’d be beautiful screenprinted on fabric for garments next year when the food trend makes its way to fashion. What flowers do you think will be most popular?