Okay, so we probably gave away too much information in our title. We get excited and do that, sometimes.

Edible flowers add extra layers of flavor and aroma to culinary dishes with intriguing variations among them. Some taste sweet, while others are sour. Some taste savory, while others are bitter. Some have an herbal flavor, while others are vegetal—and a few are essentially flavor-neutral with a more ornamental and textural purpose. No matter which of the edible flowers you use from The Chef’s Garden, though, they all add visual appeal and more to creative dishes.

If Bob Jones, Jr. and his farm team at The Chef’s Garden could receive one belated holiday gift, it’s that people would sit down and watch a fascinating series of short videos created by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA): the Science of Soil Health Video Series. To help, this post will contain overviews from the first five of them, along with insights from our farm team.

The chef and farmer relationship is at the heart of everything we do, and we’re honored to share how two chefs use our kale varieties for dishes and menus.

At Roots 2018, we described the food as medicine philosophy as healing yourself, one bite at a time. Experts on our panel discussion included the one-and-only Jane Esselstyn, and three distinguished chefs: Andrea Beaman, Maneet Chauhan, and Jehangir Mehta—and here’s the entire food as medicine discussion from our culinary conference:

Farmer Lee Jones compares the moment before a chef begins to create a dish as a blank canvas—and the farm-fresh produce we grow as the paint for those canvases.