Nature's bounty – treat with care.
Dandelions are plentiful throughout the summer. Don't spud them out of your lawn, eat them! Outer coarse leaves can be cooked like spinach (boil quickly with a little water and butter in a covered pan). New tender leaves can be eaten raw in salads - but they wilt quickly. You can even eat the flowers, deep-fried in batter. Don't eat too much – and don't eat the stalks! Medical warnings here.
Puffballs may appear on your lawn. When young, they can be sliced and fried in butter. But make sure they are puffballs and not young poisonous agarics.
Radish tops and turnip tops can be cooked like spinach.
Stuffed celery: Pound grated cheese and margarine until smooth. Insert into celery sticks. Chill. Cut the sticks in slices.
Boiled cabbage: It used to accompany every meal in the Good Old Days. All institutions smelled permanently of the stuff. American poet T.S. Eliot thought it the heart of English identity. It was vile. But lightly boiled cabbage can be eaten cold with salt, pepper, oil and vinegar as a salad. Or you can heat the cooked cabbage with margarine, vinegar and sugar until the sugar melts. Good luck finding proper margarine.
Potato pasty: Make pastry, roll out. Peel and cube a potato. Put the potato cubes on half the pastry, fold over and seal the edges. Bake in a moderate oven for an hour. For extra excitement, add a knob of butter or some chopped parsley to the potato. Or go wild and mix in some cooked spinach and grated Gruyère cheese.
Pigeon's eggs: You can bake a pigeon's egg in the hollow of an avocado. For a more Brexit version, use a tomato, or a cooked turnip or potato. A monastic dovecote the size of a house may not fit in your garden, but you can put up a small one on a pole, as in the Jan Steen painting above.
Sorrel: Use instead of wild rocket, but sparingly – it's sour and peppery.
Lime leaves: Young lime or linden leaves can be added to salads. Wash them well - the trees tend to grow at the sides of busy roads.
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