Drying Sunflower Seeds

The Dry Garden: A sunflower or two. Or 200000

There’s overdoing it, and there’s what I did. After sowing a pound of sunflower seeds last winter, eight months later, the phrase “height of summer” can now be taken literally. In lieu of a front hedge, I have sunflowers. One astounded woman even came to my door asking when and how to plant them. Neighbors call my home “the sunflower house.” Out back, my yard is a vertical meadow.

I’d known that our native sunflowers easily reached 12 feet tall, but I’d never appreciated what happened when you planted roughly 200,000 seeds. The upshot out back from the fraction that germinated feels less like a garden and more like a field. From a distance, a sea of yellow ripples in summer breezes. Following a long path into the back garden, the person strolling becomes engulfed. There have been games of hide and seek. Then there’s the scent, less floral than edible. When the sun hits the sunflowers, the garden smells like a pan of freshly baked cookies.

This tease should come with a caveat – the sunflowers in question are not the massive-headed domesticated sort that can be crushed for oil or provide seeds for trail mix. They are wild, the type that sunflower growers and most seed companies call “weeds.” The first thing that strikes you on crushing a dried flower head is how small the seeds are compared with their commercial and culinary cousins –- smaller than a grain of rice. Only after ordering wholesale from S&S Seeds in Carpinteria, a company that specializes in wild land restoration, did I check what I was doing by sowing a pound. Their formula is ¼ pound per thousand square feet. It was dumb luck that I wanted to cover about 4,000 square feet, though it took some culling to free up the vegetable plots.

The reasons for planting so many were five-fold: First, second and third, I love them. A mere glimpse out the window at their waving heads can pierce the darkest of moods. Unlike many commercial single-headed sunflowers with names that connote their enormity (Mammoth, Titan, Giant), the heads of wild sunflowers are small and each plant produces many blooms on a steady progression of arterial branches. One plant is quite capable of turning into a towering bush. The flowers just keep coming. So do the finches, which now commute from flower to water fountain as if  my backyard were an endless loop produced by Disney.

Daikon Ravioli with Sun-dried Tomato and Sunflower Seed Cheese ...

A stuffed ravioli that actually makes you lose weight? According to the wisdom of Chinese medicine, daikon, due to its astringent nature, aids the liver in the metabolism of fat and protein and helps to promote weight loss.

This eye catching dish is a modern take on traditional ravioli with no floury work surfaces in sight. Raw and crunchy it comes in three parts. The celebration of the cheesiness of the sunflower seeds, the sweetness of the sun-dried tomatoes with flecks of basil and the peppery delicateness of the daikon blend together well to create a beautifully balanced mouthful of yum.

Raw daikon is abundant in digestive enzymes diastase, amylase, and esterase, which are very similar to those found in the human digestive tract. Raw daikon is used throughout Japan to aid digestion.   It also contains vitamin C and folacin and is a cruciferous vegetable which has cancer-protecting potential.

Daikon is very versatile too, you can have it raw, cooked or even grated in a tea which is said to act as a decongestant and reduce fever.

Here’s how to create a daikon ravioli that even Nonna would be proud of…

Ingredients:

Place the lemon juice in a bowl of warm water add daikon, sprinkle with sea salt and soak for 20 minutes. When finished drain off the water and pat daikon dry on paper towels and set aside. Whilst you are waiting for the daikon you can make the cheese.

Sunflower Seed Cheese

Ingredients:

Place seeds in food processor and mix until a smooth paste is formed. For a creamier cheese add filtered water. Place in refrigerator to firm up and make the sauce.

Sundried Tomato Sauce

Ingredients:

Place all ingredients in a food processor  until it becomes a smooth texture you can add more olive oil until you find your desired consistency.

Now place your favourite salad leaves on a plate and top with daikon ravioli sandwiched with cheese.  Spoon sun-dried tomato sauce over the top and drizzle with olive oil.

How to Dry Foods

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Transactions of the ASAE.

Seeds handbook, biology, production, processing, and storage

Atlas of nutritional data on United States and Canadian feeds