Low-carb breakfast

[TheAwfulToad]

Posting photos on the internets isn't really my thing, but I thought some people might be interested in a LCHF breakfast.

That's home-cured bacon, mushrooms, scrambled free-range eggs with fresh oregano, stir-fried sweet potato leaves and daylilies, and butterfly pea flowers (yes, they're edible - taste a bit like mild mangetout). It's a lot less than I'd normally have for breakfast/brunch, but I'm feeling lazy today.

Excuse my ugly plating. Not my strong point.

[Hidden]

Hi TheAwfulToad, a great breakfast and the butterfly pea flowers look sensational what an addition to your meal and being low carb makes it even better.

So thanks for posting this great photo we love photo's of others meals on HE with no ifs or buts... 😊

[Zest]

Hi TheAwfulToad

I think this is a lovely photo - I especially like the Butterfly Pea Flowers - very pretty. Your breakfast looks tasty.

Zest

[TheAwfulToad in reply to Zest]

Flowers are really nice addition to meals. Ever tried nasturtium flowers in salads? They taste a bit like watercress or rocket. Deep-fried pumpkin flowers are delicious.

[G1nny]

Thanks for this ! Looks great.

[MrsStop]

It looks marvellous and I hadn’t considered adding veggies in my breakfast other than maybe spinach in an omelette. I’ll give it a whirl although I’m not that keen on the sweet potato. Thanks for posting the picture - nice plate 👍

[TheAwfulToad in reply to MrsStop]

Sweet potato leaves are one of my favourite vegetables - they have a very unique taste. They grow like a weed in my climate. I can just walk outside and snip a few leaves whenever I want them.

Theoretically they'd grow in the UK too, if anyone is interested in trying; just get a sweet potato from the supermarket and stick it in a pot of soil. Sometimes they've been treated with chemicals to stop them rooting, but you might get lucky.

[amykp]

AwfulToad--We have too many sweet potato leaves--purple and red (I mean the potatoes, not the leaves!) I eat LCHF too, and sadly give the potatoes away.

I KNEW the leaves were edible, but I thought you could only eat them very young, and never raw. I mean, I was told they were poison otherwise. It scared me off them.

So, is that a myth? I'd love to have them as a food source! And are those your own lilies?Just the petals? Will you take a picture of that dish before you cooked it?

[sunny369 in reply to amykp]

I was also under the belief they were poisonous?

[TheAwfulToad in reply to amykp]

LOL - I give the potatoes away too!

sunny369 they're definitely not poisonous cos I'm still here Sweet potatoes are order Solanales, so related to nightshade, bindweed, etc. People used to think the same about potatoes and tomatoes, for the same reason!

I wouldn't like to try them raw, but they're a regular part of the diet here (although food snobs consider them 'peasant food'). Typically stir-fried with garlic and a dash of soy sauce. But yeah, you do need to cut the young growing tips, not the older leaves. Nothing wrong with them as such, they just tend to be a bit stringy.

We actually have different varieties here bred for different purposes: some are optimized for leaf production, some for tubers.

amykp : the lilies are the little stubby stems (mixed with the sweet potato leaves), like sections of celery. You can eat the flower buds, but for obvious reasons those are very seasonal.

The blue flowers are the butterfly pea. Apparently you can eat the pods when they're very small (like mangetout) but I've never tried them. They tend to grow rapidly to maturity, so it's hard to actually find young pods. The plant grows like triffids. I'll take a photo later; it's very ornamental as well as productive.

[HOBIEONE]

Good stuff ! What time is breakie tomorrow ?

[amykp]

Where do you live, Awfultoad? I had purple sweet potato leaves sautéed w soy sauce + garlic in a Filipino restaurant once. Tasty, but as I said, I was worried to harvest at home.

And I just looked it up: I grow and eat butterfly pea flowers too. I call it something else: clitoria flowers. But, perGoogle it turns out it's the same thing. I throw them in salad, mixed with nasturtiums. pretty!

PS I tried the pods. I didn't find them so great. Just sayin'