The Barstow Salad Scale - level one challenge

I went around my garden and picked this lot - red lettuce, galega leaves, fava tops and parsley.

I was rather pleased with it and decided to make a salad.



I added grated beetroot, from my other half's garden, and then chopped red cabbage, apple and leek, which I have to admit were supermarket ones...

I was rather proud of the result, but I was informed by a friend that it simply did not measure up to Stephen Barstow's salads and needed more 'edimentals'.



So I grabbed my colander and went back outside to see what pretty things I could find.

In the garden I found fennel, turnip flowers and some little bits of broccoli that were growing up around where the main head had been cut. And I also foraged some pennywort and chickweed.



Then my son made me an omelet using one duck egg and one chicken egg, with bacon and cheese because he puts bacon and cheese in everything, added a great big handful of salad, squirted some sour cream and chive dressing on it, and presented me with my dinner!



It was rather good! And I think I might have achieved level one on the Barstow Salad Scale.

MIne had thirteen ingredients, of which two were foraged and eight were home-grown.

It's hard to say how many 'flowers' were included - definitely the turnip flowers, but there were also a few flowers on the chickweed and favas, and the broccoli is really just unopened flowers.

So, I want to throw a challenge out to all of you. Make a level one Barstow Salad, with at least ten ingredients, of which five must be homegrown, two foraged, and one in flower.

Then take a photo and show us the result!

This time of year here (the first warm week after the most wintry winter I've seen here in ten years) that's a real challenge indeed. Thinking on it, but I don't think I have five home-grown items preserved from last year or in harvestable condition now.

But meanwhile and just for fun, here's a 100% foraged salad I made last year on April 2:



At the time I wrote to someone about it thusly:

So I woke up this morning with a notion about what I wanted to have for lunch. I started by shelling a few pecans (perhaps 8-10) that I picked up last fall under local trees. Then I went out and picked some buds and flowers off an ice-damaged Eastern Redbud tree that's growing in our yard. Finally, I cut about twenty succulent daylily stems from an amazing 70-year-old patch that's adjacent to the yard.

Sadly I do not recommend the recipe for anything except beauty. Although I'd eaten a fair few daylily stems prior to making that salad, that's when I learned that "too many" of them can have a powerful laxative effect. And twenty stems? Is too many.

Dan Boone wrote:Sadly I do not recommend the recipe for anything except beauty. Although I'd eaten a fair few daylily stems prior to making that salad, that's when I learned that "too many" of them can have a powerful laxative effect. And twenty stems? Is too many.

Thank you for that. I about died laughing. Perked me right up!

Glad I could make you laugh!

It's a pity, though. New daylily stems (the white part) are sweet and tender and delicious at a time of year when not much is, around here.

Oh come on you could have taken that photo any time. Lush greens in the Mediterranean? I'll hollow out the earth before I believe that one!

Interesting challenge! I wonder if I can pull it off in December. It's crazy warm out.

What exactly is the Barstow Scale? I can't find it anywhere on line. I am a Stephen Barstow fan.

Barstow makes salads of many different ingredients. I don't know the scale. I love eating and gathering like this. Many of my vegies, especially the leafy ones, have gone feral (viral for you young techies). Others are weeds, some which showed up and others which I have intentionally imported into my yard. That way you can always get leafy greens in our wet, mild winters. I'm gathering perennial arugula, dandelion, sweet cicely, false dandelion, bitter cress, turnip greens, leeks, scorzonera, plantains, and even some curly mallow right now, but what is available changes in all different parts of the year.
John S
PDX OR

Matu Collins wrote:What exactly is the Barstow Scale? I can't find it anywhere on line. I am a Stephen Barstow fan.

We're inventing it right here, in this thread.

Level one seems to be "at least ten ingredients, of which five must be homegrown, two foraged, and one in flower."

When enough of us have had fun doing a level-one salad, I'm sure someone will come along with something a whole load more exciting and we can dub that level two and go out and emulate it for a bit, until it's time to invent level three.

Something tells me that someone 2 levels above me or below me on the Barstow salad scale will appear crazy to me.
John S
PDX OR

Burra Maluca wrote:

Matu Collins wrote:What exactly is the Barstow Scale? I can't find it anywhere on line. I am a Stephen Barstow fan.

We're inventing it right here, in this thread.

Level one seems to be "at least ten ingredients, of which five must be homegrown, two foraged, and one in flower."

When enough of us have had fun doing a level-one salad, I'm sure someone will come along with something a whole load more exciting and we can dub that level two and go out and emulate it for a bit, until it's time to invent level three.

Aha!
Back in the olden days (mid nineties) when I was vegan I would go to restaurants sometimes and there would be nothing but some sad iceberg lettuce and sorry chunks of flavorless pale pink tomato. If I was lucky, a circle of red onion and a slice of cucumber. At least there was usually oil and vinegar. Those salads were level -10