This morning I noticed that our lovage has sprouted. Potato soup isn’t potato soup without lovage. A few leaves of lovage brighten up any salad. Not only is the plant delicious, it has a celery like taste, with many medicinal uses, it is beautiful and grows easily. Since it is a perennial, it comes up every year so once you have it, you have it forever.
This is one of those many, incredible vegetables that you never see in a supermarket. One of the downsides of our modern food distribution system is that it is based on handling huge volumes of products. The big box stores will only handle things that are produced on a vast scale, will travel great distances well, and keep on the shelves for a long time. This drastically limits the variety of produce they carry. This is why cities need to have hundreds of neighborhood food gardens, so that everyone can savor the full gamut of fruits and vegetables that nature provides. Imagine being within walking distance of a garden where you could stop, on your way home from work, to pick the vegetables and herbs you need for supper. So many vegetables taste best when eaten within an hour of being picked.
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall of The Guardian posted a number of lovage recipes here.
According to Wikipedia:
The leaves can be used in salads, or to make soup or season broths, and the roots can be eaten as a vegetable or grated for use in salads. Its flavor and smell is somewhat similar to celery. Lovage tea can be applied to wounds as an antiseptic, or drunk to stimulate digestion. The seeds can be used as a spice, similar to fennel seeds.
- Lovage on Wikipedia
- Lovage on Botanical.com
- Washington Post – Lovage: A big plant with an even bigger flavor
Thank you for this reminder. It has been a long time since we were able to have a garden and I am starting this year, though without time to do it properly, using existing large flower planters on the old overgrown property we bought, hoping to naturalize some things and plant others in straw bales. Lovage is a wonderful herb and the links were interesting. What a great website you have, with all these treasures tucked in among the beautiful chickens. A few weeks ago you inspired me to look for nettles and there they were, on our own property. They were new to us and we love them. Thank you.
You’re welome. Glad you found some nettles.
By the way I would love to buy your book but am having the same problem many others are with iBooks and have not been able to. Is it available in any other format?
Unfortunately, the book is only available from iBooks. What sort of problems are you having with iBooks?
None of my iBooks will open and when I try to purchase your book I am directed to open my app where I’m supposed to be able to review and purchase the book. I click the button, the app opens, and nothing further happens. I’ve done some web searching and see that I’m not alone in either of these problems but so far I haven’t found clear fixes. And I have limited time right now to pursue it. I have been wondering whether Apple is hearing from authors about this!
I haven’t heard others having that particular problem, but I did read case of people having problems with iBooks and were able to resolve the issue by updating to the latest version of iBooks.
There are a lot of similar complaints online. Thanks for your suggestion — I think I’m up to date but I’ll double check my version. This all started with iOS 7. Would love to get your book, but this is getting a bit off topic for your site so I will leave it for the Apple groups.