Flowering Chives

An herb garden is a nice thing to have. Fresh herbs at a supermarket are usually OK. And it's easier to get parsley and cilantro there than to grow them or cut them. But rosemary and sage, for instance, are much better grown yourself and cut fresh.

Each year the first herb that's ready always seems to be chives. They've been ready for a while now, in my garden, and they've already gone to flower. Which is bad. Here is a pic of my chives:


(No, I don't know why the bottom part is out of focus. I'm trying to figure it out.)

The point of all this is that my flowering chives remind me of something Alan Harding said on his short-lived Cookin' in Brooklyn, if anyone remembers that thing. I forget what the recipe was, but one of the ingredients was "flowering chives."

Well, as anyone who grows chives knows, once the chives go to flower, the leaves (what you eat) become woody and flavorless. It's like eating straw. So I don't get the point of having that as an ingredient unless you don't know what you're talking about and are trying to make your recipe sound more exotic. Like having orange blossom water or some shit. Give me a f*cking break.

This isn't the only dumb thing Harding said. See here. Not that I didn't like the guy. His recipes didn't really do much for me, and he seemed like a weird dude, but nice enough.