My tomatoes are coming along nicely this year, but there are only two of them on the giant vine, and as much as I look forward to enjoying them later in the season, for now I am addicted to stooping down to smell their leaves, which have a wonderful, peppery tomato fragrance. Can I eat them?

According to McGee (p. 330), I can, and he cites the example of some chefs who add them to their tomato sauces. But can they be used like celery leaves, chopped onto a salad like fresh herbs? I wonder if this would add some tomato-ey zing to my next bowl of mixed greens. And what about those beet stalks, which greatly outsize the bulbs at the end? What about the leaves at the end of the stalks? Are these destined to be refuse, or can they serve some other purpose? Obviously peel of lemon, lime and orange, etc. can be candied or zested and used in numerous dishes and desserts. Are there other fruit or veggie scraps that typically get thrown away that shouldn't be?

I don't care for the taste/aroma of tomato leaves. I would treat them as a rather pungent herb, though, and just use a fine sprinkle of chopped leaves lest they overwhelm whatever they are eaten with.

Beet greens (from red beets) are a traditional pot herb. They are tender, delicious and loaded with vitamins. They are best eaten young, however. I suppose you could eat the greens of mature beets, but they'd be tougher, take longer to cook and might be bitter. The tops of golden beets are not good to eat, apparently. They are thicker and fleshier than the red varieties. I don't imagine they'd make you sick, but I've always taken the advice of the experts and not cooked them. I'd prefer to focus on delicious food rather than just "not letting things go to waste." I imagine you could add them to a vegetable stock, if they weren't bitter. As far as the stems of red beets go, if the greens are very young, I chop and cook the stems with the leaves. Older beet stems would probably be tough and a bit woody.

Jacques Pepin is of the "let nothing go to waste" school. He saves all vegetable peelings and uses them to make stock. When I had an organic vegetable garden, I used to make compost with all the garden detritus and vegetable garbage, including coffee grounds and egg shells. If you live in an apartment or don't have room for a compost pile, you can find compact, container-style composters if you look in Organic Gardening Magazine or at the Rodale Press website. I'm sure that they can be found in other places, too, but that's the most obvious one off the top of my head. The compost you make can nourish your plants, and you can feel virtuous about not letting anything organic go to waste, even if it isn't edible.

As far as common garden plants go, the only leaves I know you definitely shouldn't eat are from rhubarb. From rhubarb-info.com:


They go on to say you'd have to eat a ridiculous quantity of leaves for the dose to be fatal, but you can get sick even from small quantities.

I grew up eating beet greens and I love them, although I know some people really don't care for them. I've eaten the greens of mature beets as well and they do tend to be a bit chewier than beet greens, but they're still very satisfying.

Not a scrap, but I'm personally a fan of dandelion greens. The last time she visited, my grandmother went into my yard to pick them before preparing dinner. I love the idea that something that most consider a weed is a delicious meal in and of itself.

Radish greens are delicious, steamed or sauteed with a little garlic. We like to slice up radishes, sautee them in butter, and then add the greens to slightly cook them.

i have always been curious about pokeweed and its berries.

as a child i was taught that horses should say neigh to them but that those who didn't and ate them by the fence would crumple and whinny their last.

even with a strong chemical fixative, they make a surprisingly weak dye.

which reminds me of something else related to the omnivore's dilemma -- or who goes first with unfamiliar potential sources of nourishment and gastronomy -- has anyone out there eaten local slugs? (i know they provide a litmus test for salt and can be lured by beer.)

Freshly cut young leaves and shoots may be cooked and eaten like spinach. They should be boiled twice, and the first water being discarded. In 1969, when astronaut Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a popular song on the radio was "Poke Salad Annie." The song depicted a poor southern girl who picked a wild plant called pokeweed for a vegetable. The greens are also called poke salet, and they are sometimes canned and sold in markets.
Ripe berries yield a crimson juice that was used as a substitute for red ink and to enhance the color of pale wines. The coloring of wine with pokeweed berries has been discouraged because they are very poisonous.

I love beetroot, but the beet greens are not a scrap left over from the root; they are a delight on their own. They are very similar to, and closely related to, chard. I've read that chard is sometimes known as "leaf beets", although I've never heard anyone call it that. Even the leaves of mature beets are nice. They certainly need to be cooked. I don't care much for even young beet leaves as a salad green, although some people use them that way. Beets, chard, and spinach are all part of the goosefoot family, a fact which delights me.

"Silverbeet" is another name for chard, in places that aren't the US. left click

Dandelions are the traditional "spring tonic" of many cultures, including 18th and 19th century America. In the days before industrialized agriculture and food preservation via canning and freezing, people subsisted through the winter months primarily on root vegetables, such as carrots, potatoes and turnips, and salted cabbage. The earliest harbinger of spring, in many places was the emergence of grass and weeds. Grass is not digestible in the human stomach, but many weeds are. Before anything in the garden had grown enough to eat, there were edible wild greens like dandelion, cress and lamb's quarters, which are very high in vitamins and minerals. Our ancestors may not have known about vitamin deficiency, but they knew that eating dandelion greens in the Spring, after a long winter of nothing green to eat, made them feel better.

Dandelion greens are very popular where I grew up in Pennsylvania. Salad were often prepared with the greens, a hot bacon dressing and chopped hard-boiled eggs. It is an Easter staple if the plants are out. Churches actually have dandelion and ham dinners. Some of the first wine I smuggled from my parents' liquor cabinet was homemade dandelion wine - there is a reason it is not available at your local wine purveyor.

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Tomato leaves are poisonous. The leaves (as well as the stems) contain an alkyloid called Tomatine that if eaten in quantity, causes serious gastrointestinal distress. Tomatoes, (also potatoes aned tobacco) come from the nightshade plant family.

you can also eat pepper greens

Not sure you're right about that one:

"Tomato leaves have long been considered potentially toxic because they contain a defensive [aka poisonous] alkaloid, tomatine, but recent research has found that tomatine binds tightly to cholesterol molecules in our digestive system, so that the body absorbs neither the alkaloid nor its bound partner. It thus reduces our net intake of cholesterol! (Green tomatoes also contain tomatine and have the same effect.) It's fine, then, to freshen the flavor of tomato sauces with the leaves."

(From 'On Food and Cooking,' by Harold McGee, page 331)

Google "Tomatine" and you will see some of the "recent research" he refers to.

Heh...what do I know? It depends on how much is eaten, and whether you're a human, dog or cat.

From North Carolina State University's horticulture department's website
And Cornell University's Poisonous Plants Informational database (FAQ #276)

Brr, have you used pepper greens before? I happen to have these in my garden this summer as well, and wouldn't mind putting them to use. What would you do with them?

And what about carrot tops (having in mind the leafy greens and not the comedian who gives me nightmares)?

removing the stems, you can chop up carrot top greens and saute them with other ingredients (herbs and greens and garlic or onion), adding them towards the end, for pasta. they have their own flavor but don't exactly set off any fireworks and i wouldn't use them alone. just tasting them will give you some more ideas.

My husband's uncle showed up at our place in Vermont years ago, with some homemade dandelion wine he'd made. He was so anxious to try it, he hadn't strained out the flowers, and it was still fizzy, because the fermentation wasn't yet complete. Gaak. He also introduced us to the dubious pleasure of eating sliced puffballs fried in cheap margarine. If you can imagine the flavor and texture of hot pencil erasers, you've got it. He was a wonderful, eccentric fellow. He got us started with beekeeping and extracting honey, and taught us how to make pickled herring. And rebuilt the engine in our VW Squareback for us, after it had thrown a rod.

we put them in stews at the end of the cooking process like you would with spinach.....we mainly use them in filipino recipes which tend to be very heavy on greens of any type...spinaach, cabbage, collard, mustard, bok choy etc etc

we usually have green pepper plants....not sure how leaves from spicier plants would taste/cook

This would work for the comedian as well.

For what it's worth, the Fantome Pissenlit is a Belgian beer brewed with Dandelions. It is truly excellent. Last time I was at the Brickskeller, they were out, but if you ever see a bottle (750ml) definitely give it a shot.

poke salad was a staple in my childhood trips to Oklahoma. i distinctly remember a very large salad of the stuff and don't remember any ill effects from eating it. i say chomp away (but i'm so not liable if you are weak-stomached).