Lee, I like cooking, slow cooking. I grow fresh vegetables and herbs in my garden. I think necessity (replacement) and curiosity might be one of reasons to use the styles for cooking. Sometimes I can not find or forgot buying perfect ingredients (missing one particular spice) on the recipes, then I had to use alternative replacement to compromise. Then it turns more interesting dishes. I grow micro green. I run out of a packet of micro green seeds, but I found many self sow new sprouts of arugula in the garden. I tried them for my salad. More flavor and beautiful dark green color enhanced the salad dish. Makiko On Nov 5, 2013, at 10:46 PM, Lee Poulsen wrote: > I have always wondered how in the world the first people to try the styles in cooking thought to do so. I can understand throwing flowers into a cuisine, the whole flower, like squash blossoms or nasturtium petals. But just the styles? What were they thinking? > > Once they found what a wonderful spice it was, it's easy to understand why they would then keep selecting for longer length styles. > > --Lee Poulsen > Pasadena, California, USA - USDA Zone 10a > Latitude 34°N, Altitude 1150 ft/350 m > > On Nov 4, 2013, at 10:38 PM, John Grimshaw <john@oltarakwa.co.uk> wrote: > >> I have used the styles of Crocus cartwrightianus as saffron and they're >> fine, just rather shorter than those of the cultigen C. sativus, selected >> somewhere millennia ago for its exceptional style length. > > _______________________________________________ > pbs mailing list > pbs@lists.ibiblio.org > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/