I think ALL rose petals are "edible" (as long as not sprayed with ANYTHING, on purpose or accidentally), to answer your question. Of course, not all will taste the same, or be as good for various food uses. Lots of good ideas above. Did you know that during WWII, when the UK was losing tens of thousands of tons of shipping (mostly food imports) daily to the German submarine blockade, they were running short on various types of food. Also, vitamin C, as they do not grow citrus. However, gardeners there DO (and DID) grow roses! So, the government asked people to collect the rose hips, got tons of them, and were able to process them into Vit C tablets. True story. Roses are useful! Jackie

Hi Anthony, Like Mark, my prices are based on retail, not wholesale. You are essentially a contract grower of specialty produce. If chefs want specific varieties, they must pay a premium, and truly high-end restaurants (that's my market, as well) will just pass on the cost to the guests - don't short yourself. I have worked in high-end restaurants for over 25 years, and been a supplier to them for as long. If your quality is good, don't be afraid to charge what it's worth - it is a lot of labor and a lot doesn't get sold to the best restaurants, because they only want the best, and that is expensive to create. Chefs want clean, unblemished, uniformly sized produce, because it is cheaper for them to process into an elegant presentation. Generally they prefer smaller rather than larger sizes - haricot verts instead of large green beans, slender short carrots instead of large ones - because it means less prep time in the kitchen so less labor cost. They prefer, and know how to recognize, freshness, so harvest your most perishable crops early on the morning of delivery day, and field chill if necessary. If you bring them bug-eaten leaves, crooked carrots, or 10 pounds of potatoes that weigh 1/2 oz and 2 lbs in the same bag, or anything that needs to be washed, they aren't happy. Do your first sorting right in the field into 3 categories - best quality, very good, and the rest. As an example, my purple carrots are grown in beds that are 30" wide and 20' long (50 sq. ft) where the soil is sifted 18" deep, so they all grow straight and fast. I wash them by hand, sort them by size, cut the greens at 1 1/2 inches from the top of the carrot (I sell the tops separately) and sell them 12/$5. They are ready to cut and cook when they arrive. I have a replacement guarantee for any produce that gets returned because of quality issues, or I credit the next order if they don't want a replacement. I deliver on Thursdays and Mondays only, because they are too busy on weekends and Monday they have time to spend talking about the week ahead. I expect payment within ten days, or impose a service charge. Most pay on delivery. For your first year, one restaurant may be all you should commit to, and market the surplus to the others as you have it. Tell the other restaurants that this is your first year doing this type of marketing, and you don't want to sacrifice quality, but you will keep them apprised of any surplus specialty items and they will have first pick. Chefs are very pressed for time and don't like any BS, so be upfront and direct - they'll appreciate it. It is more important to meet the expectations of volume and quality in the beginning, and create a reputation that will allow you to maintain a premium price for your produce. If it's really good, the chefs will be calling you. The only discount should be for produce that doesn't meet your highest standards, and if you can find a non-restaurant market for that, such as caterers or gourmet grocers, it will serve your reputation... chefs talk to each other all the time. I grow in Maine, and most of my markets are local, but I have sold my produce in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, D.C., and Palm Beach, and they pay air-freight shipping rates. Ask the chef you are working with how many people he serves per week (in the trade we call them "covers", i.e.; "we did 158 covers last night," which means they served 158 entrees, not people. Remember that, in most fine dining, dinner is a salad or appetizer, the main meal, dessert, and beverages. You should try to have something from your farm on every plate, even if it is garnishing material like Blue Basil flowers. Even in urban markets, restaurants are seasonal - there are way more rich people in New York in the winter than in the summer (a lot come to Maine), and your area will have seasonal variation too. The chef should be able to guide you towards when demand will slow. Remember too that you have a good market around the winter holidays, so it pays to have something to offer between Thanksgiving and New Years, and Valentines Day can be a nice winter income pop if you plan right. These days, "high-end" in the restaurant industry assumes that each guest will pay $80 or more for dinner, and often way more... some of my clients charge over $200, not including drinks, per person. The very highest-end restaurants routinely get $400 per person, and I have served tables that spent over $10,000 per person - it is a very different world for the 1% crowd. High-end restaurants have a lot of overhead, but they aren't hurting like the mid-range restaurants are. This is the market you want to shoot for, because they have a stable clientele who don't worry so much about economic fluctuations, they just want the best, and will pay for it. There were only 20 restaurants in America last year that received 5-star ratings from Mobil, considered the most stringent reviewer. There are hundreds of 3-star. You want to be selling to 4- and 5-star restaurants, because that will get you adequately funded for retirement.Your preference should always be to service the most expensive restaurants. They are buying from farms like ours. Try to get your farms' name printed on the menu in any restaurant you sell to, this will serve both you and them in that it promotes the perception that they are concerned about local organic food - a very strong selling point these days. Put their names on your own marketing, and at your stand, if the chefs agree to it. Use press releases for marketing as well - if there is a culinary benefit, or the chef is doing a special event, donate something and get it publicized. Sid Wainer is one of the largest purveyors of specialty produce in New England, his website will give you some insight on pricing of some specialty items. Professional cooking magazines will also have good references to follow up on for pricing - much of my garden planning revolves around culinary resources rather than seed catalogs. Publications aimed at the retail consumer market will be of less usefulness - Saveur being a notable exception. I use Fedco for the bulk of my seed order, they are a Maine company that has principles I respect, and carry a lot of good seeds at fair prices, with substantial volume discounts. I also use Baker Creek, Johnnys', Ornamental Edibles, Kitazawa, Seeds of Italy, and Graines-Baumaux in France, and many others. I do not sell large potatoes, "utility" onions and carrots, standard green broccoli or cabbage - the return isn't worth it, and chefs can get it cheaper elsewhere. Once you calculate your plant needs for one restaurant, at least double the number of plants. Stagger planting dates, and take advantage of micro-climates to stagger the harvest further. Explore using different growing techniques as well as unusual varieties, and invest in season-extension and crop protection technology - hoop houses, row covers, IRT mulches, drip irrigation and the like will make your life easier and your product more reliable. Buy varieties based on flavor, color, and heirloom qualities for the most part, but buy common cultivars for experimenting with growing techniques. Look for things like white celery, cornichons, treviso radicchio, sea kale, Egyptian onions, and any unusual colors - carrots are the big thing right now, but black and watermelon radishes, blue peas, orange or Romanesco caulflower, or white strawberries will appeal to chefs with "foodie" clientele. I have ways of growing radishes, carrots, and garlic that are unusual and offer a product unique to my farm, I also market a lot of unusual greens and edible flowers and micro-greens - anything that makes you stand out in the mind of the chef when he wants something unique will bring in $ and more clients. Eventually, you should be intensively working about 5 acres for specialty produce, making a good living, and not need the farm stand at all. Plan to have some of your farm dedicated to ornamental products as well - cut flowers in summer, unusual pumpkins and gourds in fall, and greens in winter can all add to the bottom line. The dining room manager or GM will give you guidance on what they might buy from you instead of a florist. Here is a link that might be useful: Manzano seed

I read that wooden boards, when dried, do not harbor bacteria. I use a variety of cutting boards. My two favorites are hard maple. The very large on isy pastry and bread dough board. It never sees water. I use a bench scraper, then a clean damp white cotton terry before storing it (end on). The other, smaller ?Vermont hard maple board I use for anything -- mostly vegetables, but not sopping wet ones. If I slice bread on a nice board, I don't press down past the bottom crust or perhaps lift it. A friend learned that from an experienced German baker. I wipe this board w a clean white terry cloth, damp, not wet. Water or sopping wet good ruin wood. I often add a bit of chlorine bleach to my light soap and water, wring out till damp. Wipe w clear barely damp clean cloth. Store vertically on edge. I do not put oil on my boards, but if I were to, I would use a thin coat of fine mineral oil, then wipe it off. Oil can collect dust and odors. For something like watery meat, chicken, lobster guts <g>, I use the plastic/nylon boards that I also clean up w bleach soap and water and or run through the dishwasher. I have bamboo boards too and these are easy to clean (wipe, never soak, never dishwasher). I think non-bamboo hardwoods are the kindest to sharp knife edges. Just clean up as you go along. BTW, I never put food prepping knives that I value in the dishwasher, nor do I leave them in the sink where the blade can get chipped or the handle get mongey. Quick wash and rinse and dry take less time than opening the catalog to find a replacement. And not a good knives need to cost a lot. If my boards want to slide or rock on a solid surface, I put a few small silicone cupboards door quiet stop circles here and there. I love hardwood cutting / pastry boards!

Much as I like to cook, I like to go out even more! We go for foods I won't cook at home, which saves money (no buying pkgs of this and bags of that of which I only need a little and rest goes unused), ensures portion control, and I never, ever have to spend time doing prep or washing dishes. Woohoo! Anyway, here are some of the more interesting dishes that have crossed our path in the last couple of months as we journey from restaurant to restaurant. Maybe some of you will find some inspiration for your own kitchens: Inexpensive ethnic: - A small Portuguese grocery store offered five different brands of linguiça (they have many more, but they rotate them according to availability and limited freezer space). We chose three to pan-fry and taste-test, two local Northern CA and one from Boston MA. Spouse is Portuguese-Chinese so linguiça is one of his Favorite Foods. The Boston brand was too smoky and had too much red wine vinegar in it to be eaten alone, but baked with cannellini beans was excellent. Locals win, which made us proud, LOL. - Tea-smoked salmon at a "this is California BBQ" place. Nice-sized filet, with gentle smoke flavors, not overcooked. A bright green cilantro sauce goes well with the fish. It's derived from a Barbara Tropp recipe in her long-ago China Moon restaurant/cookbook (still available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/China-Moon-Cookbook-Barbara-Tropp/). Tea smoking is a classic Chinese cooking technique, usually used on poultry. It's great with the salmon; even pleased my Spouse who is not a salmon lover. - Khashi Ko Masu, goat in a rich gravy which the menu describes as common in Nepalese households. We specified hot for the chile level. This Ko Masu curry showed how what is good home cooking can be as fine as anything at a four-star bistro. It had a complex and well-balanced spice mixture, richly flavored without being oily. We've had a lot of curries in our lives, but this ranked as one of the best gravies ever. A great bistro would drizzle this sauce over a few slices of lamb tenderloin and charge $30 a plate. This small friendly neighborhood Indio-Nepalese restaurant uses throwaway neck bones with almost as much meat on them, along with a full cup of gravy, for a bargain $8.99. - Thai coconut soup: Spouse chose chicken, with a heat level of "hot." Not the usual clear broth, but a creamy bisque-type soup. Flecked with chile flakes, full of juicy thin-sliced chicken breast strips and generous shavings of fresh young coconut, this was a phenomenal bargain at $3. The coconut cream was rich and thick, lightened up with not only lemongrass but kaffir lime leaves. We love Thai soups, and this was one of the tastiest versions ever. - In the SF Bay Area, KFC has a very different meaning for foodies. With our large Asian population, it means Korean Fried Chicken. Batter-fried wings are generously doused with a sweet, mildly hot gojuchang. At a new restaurant we tried, their version was tasty although not great. It's always been a one-dimensional dish, with nothing complex or subtle about it. Everything is in the execution, and this restaurant delivered a slightly better than average version. It wasn't quite our style preference; we prefer a lighter batter, juicier chicken, and less goopy sauce. But we're in the minority here; a great many people like hard-fried battered chicken with lots of goopy sauce. - Stewed tripe, Ethiopian style. Very tender strips in spiced butter and onions, but actually a little bland. We'd like to try it with a souped-up chile level, the way they make zigne, their stewed beef. Spicy stews with great injera, one of our favorite bargain loves. Upscale eateries: - Stopped by a local gourmet marketplace and chose a Prosciutto di Parma to taste-test against a Jambon Serrano. The winner was…both. We liked them equally well, especially in Spouse's beloved Croque Madame. Toasted ciabatta rolls with Swiss Gruyere, with gently fried eggs on top: the best breakfast sandwich ever. We also bought some merguez sausages, which are in the freezer so they'll get super-chile-hot! Perfect with eggs or creamy polenta, I haven't decided which to do yet. - Prickly pear crème brulee. Most fruit custards are unsuccessful creations; either watery and weak-flavored, or too thick and sweet. This was a well-executed balance of fruit and creamy custard, sweet but not overly so. A lovely rosy pink color, too. - Standard fritto misto of shrimp, green beans, artichoke hearts, shishito peppers, and fennel. It was the dip that made it outstanding: an "onion ash mayo". This was one of the few Scandinavian/Modernist touches we've enjoyed, a remarkable creation. It had great depth of flavor without any 'ashy' taste, or even a strong onion taste. It was just simply…yummy. All three diners wiped the dip ramekin clean! - A Southern version of minestrone: white bean soup with tasso ham, full of diced vegetables, sliced shiitake mushrooms and whole small white beans. The tasso ham was generously diced and gave the soup a gently spicy edge. Really lovely, well-balanced but not heavy. - Fried chicken which was fabulous (lightly battered, exquisitely juicy and flavorful) but even better were the Caribbean-style accompaniments: collard greens in spiced coconut cream, black-eyed peas, and spicy Ghanian peanut sauce. The peanut sauce was lightly spiced but not chile-hot, and when the coconut cream from the collard greens was mixed into it, this was a great combination. Many times peanut sauces are cloying in texture and taste; this was not. Some lightly pickled vegetables (cabbage, sweet green pepper slices and raw carrot slices) garnished the dish. Just that little hint of acidity livened up everything. - Duck paté salad, which wasn't a salad in the traditional sense. It was a long straight piped line of slightly foamed duck liver mousse, sectioned with three thin baguette toasts that were full of airy holes, toasted to the golden brown of Melba toast. Colorful segments of barely cooked kumquats were sprinkled over the plate. This was rich yet airy, visually stunning, and Spouse loved it. He said it was a perfect starter for a day that felt like summer. - Poached egg with caviar. The sous vide poached egg was on a bed of melted leeks. The caviar is sprinkled generously on top. On the side, in a napkin to keep them hot, were six fluffy blini, so good that Spouse kept urging me to request more blini so he could eat them himself! When you break the egg yolk, you get a wonderful soup of egg, leeks, butter and caviar to eat with the blini. A luscious, amazing dish. - Asparagus salad. White and green asparagus just-picked from the restaurant's garden, barely cooked. Tiny halves of hard-boiled quail eggs decorated the top, along with a scattering of pink rings of pickled pearl onions. Underneath was a housemade sauce gribiche. The asparagus was cooked but still crunchy, the eggs amazing with the gribiche. Traditionally another hard-boiled egg is sieved on top as a garnish, but the small size and delicate taste of the quail eggs made this unnecessary. Although the pickled onions weren't needed, they were surprisingly good with the asparagus by itself. It was a lovely, fresh, satisfying salad. - Fried calamari with apricots. The baby calamari rings had a light golden batter and were delicately tender. They came with a creamy vadouvan sauce, a judicious amount of finely diced barely-cooked carrots, and a few tart fresh apricot quarters. This was a wonderful combination of flavors and textures. Vadouvan is the French curry spice mix, and I suspect the name is often used on menus to coax reluctant diners into experiencing the flavor of curry mixtures as a seasoning, rather than just cheap Indian buffet food. Regardless of whether the mayonnaise was seasoned with true vadouvan or merely a mild fragrant curry, this dish turned out to be the winner of that evening's dinner. We literally fought over this one. ================ * One notable loser: Truffled chicken nuggets. Spouse was unable to resist seeing what an upscale McNuggets would be like. He received half-a-dozen two-inch neatly-cut cubes, with a crisp golden-brown crumb coating. Alas, they had an odd texture, as if the chicken breast had been cooked, shredded, and then recombined into the cubes. The black truffle flavoring on the chicken shreds was very heavy, almost overpoweringly so. It was an awkward pairing with the whole-grain creamy mustard sauce that underpinned the plate. Spouse ate it, but said he didn't really care for it and wouldn't order it again.