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Recipes for all this easter eggs


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Easter traditions may be different in all the countries, but it seems there is one common tradition: easter eggs.

 

Easter saturday people colour eggs. Then at evening our village made a big fire on top of a nearby hill. When it was nearly burned down, wooden wheels with stray tied to them were ignited and rolled downhill towards the village. This traditions was reported back for centuries. (Osterfeuer, Osterrad = easter fire, easter wheel)

 

Easter sunday morning people hide the eggs in small nests on the so called Osterwiese (a gras field close to the village). So problem is that on countryside each house keeps some hens and so not only people with kids colour the eggs. Even the 70-90 year olds do it. But from 200 people there are only 7 kids below 14 and 5 of them are ours. So we got like 150 eggs on sunday.

 

Easter monday morning at sunshine my dad's family has a tradition to search the anthill of the forest ant. You poke a small hole in the anthill, wait for the first ants to appear and then drop an easter egg close to the ants. The ants think that it is an attack and will spray it with their acid. We use our own colour from herbs for these eggs and the colour reacts to the acid. The results are funny spotted eggs. As a reward the ants will get a cup of sugar. My grandfather said he learnd it from his grandfather, so it has a long tradition. They used to be hunters/forest workers like 200 years back.

 

Easter monday evening the kids do egg knocking and the winner gets the eggs from the looser. Even more eggs... The adults do the feared Ostereierweitwurf= easter egg distance throwing. The goal is to throw an egg over the ruins of a local castle (about 12 metres in height) so that it will land in the gras. Only eggs which are undamaged count and winner is the longest throw. As a proof that the egg was not prepared with chemicals, overcooking, .... the eggs have to be eaten by the thrower.

 

If you think curveballs, fast balls and all this at baseball are tricky you should watch eater egg throwing. Spins of the egg, throwing angle, watching for a good landing zone, breading special hens (small eggs), ..... It is like baseball, golf and horse breeding in a single sport :pirate:

 

....

 

What to do Soleier= pickled eggs, egg salade, egg on bread, filled eggs, .....

What do you do with your easter eggs? The advantage I have is probably that the eggs here are not bought. They are coloured with natural colours so pickled eggs are an option.

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Wow. Easter is celebrated over here (Canada) by the kids getting a chocolate easter bunny (we had ones that weighed 1 pound). Or a chocolate easter eggs.

 

Confectioners here make Easter specific chocolates from moulds, or eggs like Cadbury's Easter Eggs.

 

I personally bought Peeps {as a gift, as a gift!} .... (for the first time) which are basically sugar-coated marshmallows that look like chicks (baby chickens... you know, the yellow kind).

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Chattius, that is a great story about the ant hill. I"ve heard of many easter traditions but nothing like that. The details about the ant acid hitting the egg and discoloring it...fascinating. I wish I had as good a story to tell here. Usually my family is really strong on the dinner, and formal invites get sent out in advance with strong arm tactics offered to any who don't show up. Work this year pulled me from the fetstivities and I missed a few of my most youngest cousins getting to paint and have fun with the eggs. My aunt has forgiven me , with the promise of only one or two indian sunburns which she says will be payment.

 

:)

 

gogo

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Rolling a burning wheel into your villiage! That my friend is awesome entertainment. And the rest of the traditions, love them all.

 

I personnally like Deviled Eggs.

Edited by Furian67
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Yes, seems the anthill is an old family (only?) tradition. Most people who do it turn out to be very distant relatives. Some forest ants are under animal protection law now because they are an endangered species, so its probably good that not everyone is doing it. We life in a small clearing mid in forest so we have several of them close. It's nice to watch several kind of animals how they take an acid shower in an anthill to get rid of parasites.

My grandgrandpa used to clean skulls of animals in anthills when he made trophies. 'Our' biggest anthill is like 1.5 metres in height and 3.5 metres in diametre. Without the subterran part. It is build mainly from needles from needle trees. In late summer it builds new colonies. Our clearing isn't that big and they don't build their hills in mid of a dark forest. So we call some friends from fire department and we move the new colonies to other places in hope they can settle there.

 

Easter wheels:

German wikipedia has an article with some pictures, somehow there is no english one about fire wheels.

 

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osterrad

 

Deviled eggs? These are 'filled' egg halves? We do them normally with horseradish on sunday while the easter eggs are still relative fresh. Pickled easter eggs sometimes last till summer.

Edited by chattius
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From my point of view, you are in a very enviable position. Eggs go VERY fast in my household. Boiled eggs are cut in quarters in used in Soto Ayam(chicken soup), put in a coconut milk broth with chicken or even by themselves, served in a chili sauce.

There is also gado gado, steamed veggies and eggs with a peanut sauce, but I hate that.

 

Of course, there is always the old standard; deviled eggs.

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Let's do the time warp again...

I guess I will do a good old rocky horror picture show at sunday and serve Eddy for lunch. Well not Eddie, but Meatloaf. I remember a recipe from my grandparents which was popular in the afterwar years in germany: Falscher Hase = false/faked hare

 

When I was like 8 my grandparents took us kids on walking tours, showing us all the herbs and mushrooms they had to collect after school in the 1945-1947 years when all was destroyed and 2 years of bad weather ruined the harvests. I still look for wild horseradish in autumn and dig for it, and for bear garlic in late spring. So I think it is a good idea to do a sunday morning walk, collecting some herbs for the meatloaf for lunch.

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  • 11 months later...

We are approaching easter again. So I thought I repop this and ask what easter traditions you have.

 

There are several animals in old tales who bring the eastereggs. Which animals it are depends a lot of the region you live. In the german state I live, Hessen, it used to be the fox.

 

Then there are several ways to paint the eastereggs. A I wrote in the first article we use to paint with nature colours (like cooking in onion scales) and lay them in anthills to have nice patterns on them.

 

Then there are eggs god-parents and grandparents give to older kids. Normally good wishes and wise sayings are written on them.

IMG_7039_5_2.JPG

 

Unmarried boys and girls tradition

Now when my oldest is 15: Another tradition is that unmarried boys and girls meet at a slightly downhill field. 4 ropes mark the roll zone. Everyone has an egg and the boys start to roll their easteregg. Who rolls widest without having his egg rolling out of the zone is first to ask a girl for the first dance at may festival, second widest is second to ask, and so on.

 

Next the girls are rolling. If their egg hits the egg of a boy they are allowed to kiss him.

 

Video of a easterwheel, fire wheel rolling downhill at Lüdge

 

Lüdge fire wheels have a massive wood skeleton which is used for several years. To prevent them from being destroyed they are layed in water for a while. How to water them, how the stray is added and how they are prepared for rolling is this video.

 

We don't use these massive wheels, ours have a one time willow twig skeleton. They also have less stray. We have to roll them close to forest and we don't want wood fires.

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What a beautiful thread. I just sunk into all the delicious eggscapades ^^

 

:D

 

gogo

 

p.s. I've been finding eggs so particularly delicious and convenient. After all the bread and rice starches so sparse now with sugars to keep under control, I love having good, and easy to eat protein sources around. Sun flower seeds and eggs have risen to the top. I've always wanted to paint eggs, love that whole wax scraping/color art.

 

:)

 

gogo

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I forgot to add this recipe last year. The last boiled eastereggs were used for a recipe like this:

 

164266-bigfix-eier-im-speckmantel.jpg

 

Boiled eggs wrapped with bacon (use a toothpick) and roasted in a pan. Add some potatoes, a mustard sauce and Wissegemois (local slang for field vegetables): young nettles, young dandelions, young bear garlic, ...

 

This year easter is way later, so probaly leek is used.

 

I hope that we teach healthy food to our kids. We are the opinion that you are allowed to eat lard, fat, eggs, sugar, ... as long all is in a proper balance. And the apple chips (from another thread) are a real healthy replacement for potatoe-chips.

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When I first think of easter the first thing I think of is fresh flowers. We have a lot of daffodils which always represent to me that you keep doing something over time and it adds up. Because the flowers are perenials and as you keep adding them they soon grow to a great blooming field of slightly different designed flowers. Easter lillies and tiger lillies. Also popular at that time. I have a slight tradition of buying a lilly and painting it with a sky setting of rolling alternating waves of color. I am not an awesome artist, but I find that in art feelings come out no matter who you are. Kind of in a dreamy jungian? sense where no particular connection can be proven.

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When I first think of easter the first thing I think of is fresh flowers. We have a lot of daffodils which always represent to me that you keep doing something over time and it adds up. Because the flowers are perenials and as you keep adding them they soon grow to a great blooming field of slightly different designed flowers. Easter lillies and tiger lillies. Also popular at that time. I have a slight tradition of buying a lilly and painting it with a sky setting of rolling alternating waves of color. I am not an awesome artist, but I find that in art feelings come out no matter who you are. Kind of in a dreamy jungian? sense where no particular connection can be proven.

 

k, u know now we just have to see one of these eh? Your writing is terrific.

 

 

:)

 

gogo

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Its my computer and mechanical skills that may hold us back. My scanner wouldn't load the ink cartridges last time I tried. I haven't used it in over two years sadly. But its on my list to try new ink cartridges or look into a new printer. I could try to take a digital photo. Anyone have any luck with photographing art? I think that would work. I will have it in this thread this Easter.. I sent some of my flower paintings to a sick friend. I wonder if I have any left? I bet I do.

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Here's the painting that I thought of when describing the colorful electric sky. Alas my imagination is probably much greater than the actual painting, but like I had said deep within the painting always comes some sense of intuition and feel. I sent the original to my guru who had a operation on her intestine. She is in England. I am studying a course. Its from a scanned photo so it may not be as good resolution as the others. But here it is.

 

easterlilly.jpg

 

This one is what I dreamed of upon moving back to michigan that spring my dad and I built a trellis and planted hops plants. I was dreaming of those plants climbing all the way to the top and now they are into their third and fourth season since planting and they climb not only to the top but then climb all the way down. I had long hair at that time in a pony tail.

 

longhairedjeffwithdreamsofhops.jpg

 

Here is a shot of some harvested hops. They are also flowers and they start shooting out of the ground about this time of year almost.

 

Hops2010handful.jpg

 

A shot of the plant and part of the trellis.

 

IMG_1605.jpg

 

This is a colored pencil drawing of a bulb that is starting to grow.

 

bulb.jpg

 

And this is a painting of my city with an emblemic sun that reminds me a little bit of your former avatar gogo. But I painted it in 2006 when I moved back to Michigan.

 

sunandcity.jpg

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@Furian

Dinner: My oldest daughter visits a full days school, and she arrives with bus around 7pm. 2 days a week my wife closes her praxis rooms at 5pm and arrives around the same time after finishing house visits (lot of old people, countryside). The training at sport clubs for the younger daughters ends 6pm, I pick up the twins at Kindergarten 6pm and then drive to the sport clubs where #2 and #3 hopefully finished taking a shower meanwhile, returning home at 6:45pm and preparing a dinner. I thought dinner was the english word for this type of a late lunch.

 

 

@Claudius

Tiger and easter lilies are not common in germany. Daffodils are probably what we call Osterglocke (translates as easter bell). But only the top of the leaves left ground yet. Osterglocken look like:

240px-Narcissus_pseudonarcissus_flower_300303.jpg

 

We live in german mid mountain range and we have still heavy nightfrost and valley fog till way into midday. There are still some Schneeglöckchen between our fruit trees. Schneeglöckchen would translate as little snow bell. I think they are called snowdrops in England:

800px-Snowdrop.JPG

 

Blausterne (blue stars, english name is scilla) showed up between the leaves at the compost heaps too. Two-leaf-blue stars grow wild in our forests (and garden).

300px-Scilla_bifolia_150303.jpg

 

For me spring starts when the fruit trees are in full blossom. My favourites are Mispel (mespilus germanica) and Quitte (quince). We have them as big bushes in front of house. Not only nice to look at in spring at full blossom but also great fruits which are hard to get on markets nowadays.

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Very beautiful flowers chattius. You have an eye for nature. I have recently decorated an area with plastic flowers on my shelves pictures possibly to come later if the sun graces. I was kind of fussy about them being plastic because I had never had plastic flowers. But I decided it was a story in enjoying the bounty I guess. Your flowers on the other hand were captured in the outdoors air and recollected for their beauty.

Edited by claudius
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I grew up on a farm countryside in a family of wood workers while my wife in a family of mechanics and racers (her grandpa was state champion in motorbike/sidecar racing). So roses, tulips are not really our thing. But these half wild spring flowers come again every year.

We live mid forest so no need to impress people as in a town or village where people may walk along a street and can look at your garden ruin. Well it is not really a ruin, it is more a design follow functions thing. Vegetable for lunch close to stone paths near the house, so you can get some for lunch even at rain and muddy earth. Flowers are early spring ones who hopefully have vanished when I start to cut grass to have a playground for kids, I am too lazy to take care of them ;)

After the flowers rhabarbs have nice leaves, the fruit trees have blossoms, the different berries,...

 

For example we don't put flowers in our vases this time of year. We do the twigs with buds from fruit trees. The trees had to be thinned out to grow in a proper way and the cut away twigs with the buds we do in vases. So we have cherry-, plum-, quince-, apple-, pear-, josta-, medlar-blossoms weeks before they appear outdoors. We do the same actually for x-mas too. Fruit tree twigs in a vase with water in a warm room and you have them blowing at x-mas. In germany this is called a Barbarazweig, a cherry or plum twig(Zweig) cut at the day of holy Barbara (4th decembre) will show blossoms at x-mas.

German wiki has an entry and a picture from 23th decembre for it, but no link to any english entry:

220px-Barbara-Kirschzweig.jpg

 

400270962_91a140bfa7.jpg

 

We have a long tradition of wood workers in our family and I was always intrested in nature even I studied maths. I fear I was this much interested in forests that I answered every question our kids did about nature as good as I could. The result is that our oldest daughter considers to study either Arboristik or animal doc at university.

 

Arboristik can be studied at german universities and is probably called urban forestry in english speaking countries. It is more into managing a town owned working group of arborists than actually doing the hard work. But a chain saw license, a climbing license are demanded before you can even start to study, she will have both being in volunteer firefighters when she is 16. She is better than me in replacing wasp-, bee- or hornet-nests already.

Edited by chattius
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Aieyieyie, stop we can learn a lot from the German's. No I admire the resourcefulness of your society and people. And your efficiency in bringing out the beauty within order. It is two strange twins to have both orderly stability and a functional appreciation of beauty in its form and substance. Well not to get into politics which I wasn't really going into anyways. Remarkable, and merkwurdig I should brush up on German but I wish to learn spanish.

 

Completely unrelated to flowers! Unfortunately sacred only calls me when my anxiety disorder and bipolar type disorder, medically diagnosed allow. No build allows the non-killing of monsters. Well I intend to develope a eastern philosophy story adventure it will have to unleash my creative writing skills and a bit of the absorption from 9 years of steady practice in eastern devotional and meditation (thats a relative lie or truth statement). A story for morrowind or oblivion from the elder scrolls.

Edited by claudius
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I do not know if it is typical german. It may be local to the place I live. I think it is because of our century (milleniums?) old local history of Hauberg using. Hard to describe what a Hauberg is. It is like groups of people owning a forest and the nearby iron mines together. It was discussed in a democratic way which forest area was chopped for charcoal for the smiths, the bark used for the tanners, in summer all worked as farmers, harvesting plants which grew between the young trees. Cows and not carriages were used to pull plows and carriages, so you had milk and flesh if needed. In winter most of the farmers worked as smiths, tanners, wood workers (my family tree),... It all started when the local iron production was running out of charcoal often. By using coppicing technique the same area could produce more charcoal, have buckwheat and rye between the little trees, using bark for tanning, forest pigs and cows who could fed from leaves, ... So it was like a little hard working self-sufficient community.

 

The small hilly area with all its storms fed more people than most areas 50 times bigger in other places in europe that time (before Liebig invented the fertilizer at my old university). We live in the southeastern part of the area using haubergs which belongs already to the german state Hessen. I do hard to find an english page decribing it:

 

http://homepage.mac.com/wkfisher1/Genealogical_Glean/Germana.html

During the 13th century the iron industry was revolutionized in Nassau-Siegen by the discovery that water power could be used to operate the smelters and drive the hammers that worked the iron further. The Count and the nobility were at first active in founding such water-powered ironworks, but they very soon passed into the hands of worker-owners, who banded together in the Guild of Smelterers and Hammersmiths, The members of this Guild mostly lived in the country near their plants, unlike most of the members of others guilds who lived in the cities. Due to a lack of water power in the dry seasons and to a frequent scarcity of charcoal needed for heating the ore and pig iron, the ironworks could not be operated continuously throughout the year. Thus the ironworks owners nearly always farmed in addition to their work in iron. Also the farmers frequently became part owners of the iron works, through intermarriage.

 

In the english page there is also the saga that Wayland the smith had his smithy in our area. A village is named Wielandsdorf in old papers, now Willnsdorf.

 

Another english page:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A448571

 

If you haven't guessed till now, the natives of Siegerland are more of the broody, religious, hard-working type. The secludedness of the dwellings, the hard work either growing crops or working in one of the local iron mines (or often, both!), and the notorically bad weather are likely to have formed this kind of people.

 

And, of course, there has developed a local dialect called Sejerlänner Platt ("dialect of the Siegerland"). Its most prominent attribute is the heavy pronounciation of the consonant "r", which is quite similar to that observed in e.g. Southern USA, or Scotland.

 

A russian soldier in 1946 called the people here surviving specialists: even the hauberg traditions was stopped under the Nazis when cheaper iron ore could be imported to the big iron producing towns it repopped after second world war again when germany suffered from big mis-harvests in the after war years. So the people remembered what they did for centuries and were producing leather, iron, charcoal and food again, but now supporting 4 times their number with all the fugitives from east germany (which became poland, slovakia, czech after the war). The full hauberg using was continued till the 1950ties and now tradition keeping clubs teach the technique to next generations.

 

I think my parents and grandparents and the generations before learned the hard way to get as much from forest as possible while still keeping it intact for the next generations. And even I never starved or fell real hunger, I have sucked up too much of the: don't throw anything away which can be used for something else philosophy.

Edited by chattius
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Well the story of history goes on. I have always heard that the world produces enough food to feed the world. I saw an interesting you tube, for me just a cartoon version portion called Zeitgeist Moving Forward. It talks both about history and the reality of the world that may produce. One wise philosopher said that until science takes into account human intention it won't solve the wonders of all of science such as in quantum physics perhaps and also in mental sciences.

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Here's the painting that I thought of when describing the colorful electric sky. Alas my imagination is probably much greater than the actual painting, but like I had said deep within the painting always comes some sense of intuition and feel. I sent the original to my guru who had a operation on her intestine. She is in England. I am studying a course. Its from a scanned photo so it may not be as good resolution as the others. But here it is.

 

easterlilly.jpg

 

This one is what I dreamed of upon moving back to michigan that spring my dad and I built a trellis and planted hops plants. I was dreaming of those plants climbing all the way to the top and now they are into their third and fourth season since planting and they climb not only to the top but then climb all the way down. I had long hair at that time in a pony tail.

 

longhairedjeffwithdreamsofhops.jpg

 

Here is a shot of some harvested hops. They are also flowers and they start shooting out of the ground about this time of year almost.

 

Hops2010handful.jpg

 

A shot of the plant and part of the trellis.

 

IMG_1605.jpg

 

This is a colored pencil drawing of a bulb that is starting to grow.

 

bulb.jpg

 

And this is a painting of my city with an emblemic sun that reminds me a little bit of your former avatar gogo. But I painted it in 2006 when I moved back to Michigan.

 

sunandcity.jpg

 

 

Beautiful! I really liked reading this post. The pics, colors, the veggies in the hand. There's a lot of good energy here. Do you and your family spend a good bit of time in fields?

 

Thanks for coming through with the pix Claudius, now you're making me wonder if I should maybe take some time off to indulge in some other relaxation like this.

 

:)

 

gogo

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I love to drive by fields with farm houses. There are some in my city. And there are apple orchards and blueberry patches to pick at. As far as having a green thumb we grow tomatoes and garden flowers and herbs. And then the hops. Yeah, thanks for the compliments on my pics and hops :)

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Hop

What are you doing with it? Beer brewing? Liqueur? Drugs (sleepless)?, ...

 

Wild hop is a mainly not wanted plant in my area, killing trees.

0509060.jpg

 

 

 

But young hop sprouts do a tasty salade, as in the linked recipe from worldwide gourmet.

 

 

We have 3 Totholzinseln in the forest. A Tot(dead)holz(wood)insel(island) would be an area with dead or almost dead trees in a sea of healthy trees. It is kept this way so that rare animals and plants have a place to live. Also researches say that tree parasites are less likely if doing such islands.

 

If I see too many young hop plants growing outside the corse wood islands I pull most out the ground and do a salade. They taste like a mix of broccoli and asparagus. Preperation would be close to asparagus.

 

Hopfenspargel(hop asparagus): in my area the underground roots of wild hop

Hopfensprossen(hop sprouts): in my area the out of ground below 1 foot in length sprouts of wild hop

 

Several farmers who cultivate hop for beer brewing cut away all but 3 sprouts of a plant. So all the strength of the plants goes into fewer but stronger stems (last picture below). The cut away sprouts they call Hopfenspargel or Hopfensprossen, most of them not making a diffrence, since they are not used to remove a whole plant.

 

If you buy them at a market, don't get shocked: it is way harder to harvest and smaller than asparagus and therefor way more expensive. 2 pounds need more than 1 hour to be cut.

 

klein+Hopfenspargel+2+St%25C3%25B6ttner.jpg

2002467_m3t1w145h125q75v42221_xio-fcmsimage-20110328195302-006005-4d90cafe9db04.2f4d33fc7de56e5ddad2958a085fb173_20110328.jpgtriebgeste4d131b4c70d37.png0,,3602985_1,00.jpg

Edited by chattius
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Hey chattius, yeah I grew my hops plants for beer brewing. The rage in america now is highly hopped beers. The unit of bitterness is the IBU, or international bittering unit. A lightly hopped beer such as a wheat might have 18-22 IBU if I am recalling. America's flavorless swill probably has 12 or even lower. Guiness I believe has 40 again if I recall. Some of the most hoppy american beers have 70 or even 100.

 

http://www.brewersfriend.com/2009/01/24/beer-styles-ibu-chart-graph-bitterness-range/

 

I have stopped drinking beer in an effort to have more mental clarity and healthy living. But I plan on trying the hops as a tea. Perhaps with a good amount of honey or sugar as the hop is quite bitter plant. I have Mt. Hood hops which is an american variety made from German Hallertauer. Tettnanger which is a German variety. Cascade, one of the most popular American hops with a piney taste. The German varieties are more spicey and they are called noble hops because and these in general have a taste that can go better in a lager or some beer that is smooth. The final variety is Sterling based on Czech Saaz though that one is not growing much.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hop_varieties

 

So now what part to eat for the salad? Is it the root or bine (sort of like a vine) or even leaves? I tried training 3 for climbing but even just letting them wild I still get quite a harvest. There are homebrewing clubs and if my hops are good for beer I will sell them. Last year were not so good because I did not have an Ost for drying and I dried in the sun which made them have oxidation. This year we have built an Ost which is a device with a fan and space for air to come under with drawers that have furnace philters or screens under them. The air comes up and the hops dry with the current. When I have the time I will edit with a picture of my Ost.

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