Unharvested? Well, harvested, but under- or unused. I was looking for something to replace the tender salad greens in mid-summer, so I thought amaranth leaves and malabar spinach would do the trick. Ick. But so pretty, right?
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--both the above are from essays in "The Art of the Commonplace: Agrarian Essays"Is this so hard to believe?
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Amaranth is pretty, but I’ve never eaten it. Looks like it would be bitter. Was it?
No, not bitter. Furry! Supposedly you can eat the little leaves. The seeds, though, can be popped like popcorn, and they’re a grain…
We are growing a variety known for it’s grain this year—but I heard some varieties are better than others for leaf eating. Was your variety recommended for eating? I have never had home grown amaranth—just the grain flour added to food in the market and I couldn’t tell it was there just like they say you can’t. Did you like the grain?
We used to grow borage—to add to vinegar. Supposedly you can eat that too—but it was the same as your problem—hairy leaves. Yuk.
Yeah, Monica, this was recommended for eating…multipurpose, actually; I suppose in a pinch the leaves would’ve been fine to eat, or steam… We did try the popcorn trick with the seeds. They did work, but we’d have needed about 3 cups to make a decent amount of “popcorn.” We could’ve harvested and ground the seeds up, but I didn’t quite get around to it before it began to rain a lot. OH well. Good intentions!
The smaller leaves on mine did taste okay… but I had Swiss Chard, spinach and lettuce that tasted much better. So I only tried the amaranth once. 🙂