Does Anyone Use Home Grown Seeds In Their Cooking?

Have just harvested a big pile of Nigella seeds and was hoping to chuck them in a few home made Nann breads.

This is the first time I've done this and was wondering if anyone else uses their own surplus seeds in their cooking? Do I need to prepare them before storage, cook them etc? I love eating poppy seeds too but for some reason I've read on seed packets in the past that they can cause stomach upset, which had put me off using these in cooking too. Does anyone else use these successfully and can also store them for a year too? Thought it might save me a few quid in the long run.

 

My nigella have only just begun to burst their seed pods (well, only one actually and that was yesterday: and I posted a photo of it ) Never occurred to me I may be able to cook with them.

I'm hoping to harvest my first batch of fennel seed this year for using in cooking.

I think @clueless1 was taking about poppy seeds/edible last year

 

I can't remember that, but I believe it is opium poppy seeds that are used in cooking. I daren't try them though, because although apparently opium is not extracted from the seed, I'm still a bit suspicious

I did once collect a load of seeds off my coriander, with the intention of using them in cooking, but I can't have dried them well enough because they went mouldy within a couple of weeks of harvesting them up.

 

I'll leave you to do the search ... although it may have been someone else, or my memory is playing tricks (getting old now, you see )

Your next point is the most interesting of all, re: coriander seed/mould. Off to Beginners ....

 

No danger of Opium being in the seed, you can trust me on that one, i'd know if it was

Poppy seeds add a really good flavour to bread, I lob them in the dough in large quantities.

Did a slow drive back from town earlier. The Wheat is ripe & I just saw a combine drive past.

Gleaning time soon

 

Ah well see that I do remember, very clearly. I know exactly what went wrong there because I was still brand new to the whole collecting seed/storing things game. I bought some large glass jars with cork lids from the pound shop for this very purpose. I washed them and made sure they were properly dry, then I put the freshly harvested seeds in and put the cork lid on to keep it air tight. Of course what I didn't account for was the moisture still present in the seeds. I'd harvested them when they were beige in colour and ready to fall off anyway, but in hindsight I realise two things:

* Even when seemingly dry, there is still some moisture there.
* The storage container needs have air flow to enable moisture to escape, rather than to just condense and feed the mould spores.

When storing seed now, although not for eating, I put them in paper envelopes and store the envelopes in a little open topped box inside my cabinet, where they stay good for ages.

 

What is 'gleaning time'?

 

http://worldsoldeststuff.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/worlds-oldest-viable-seeds.html

 

When the combines have been round the fields they usually leave a strip round the edge of uncut Wheat.

You used to be allowed to "Glean" anything that the harvesters didn't take, not legal anymore but no one is going to give a "tree" if you go and take it, it'll only get ploughed in to come up as a weed in next years crop.

 

Love Fennel seeds...in bread,with fish but especially to make tea

 

I likes sugar coated Fennel seeds