First, please do not use capitals - it means you're shouting at us.

Second, the leaves and flowers are the parts of borage that you can eat. The leaves need to be very young - as they get older they get horribly hairy and spiky, most unpleasant on the tongue. They need to be finely chopped before being added to salads.

Finely chop borage leaves and enjoy on bread and butter, or in salads, pickles or bean soups. Or steam and serve like spinach. Use flowers in salads, or battered and fried as a vegetable. Add leaves to any summer drink. They not only give a subtle, refreshing cucumber flavour, but they actually reduce the temperature of the drink as well. Add some leaves or flowers to a cucumber/yoghurt dip or side dish for curries.

Borage Soup
1 cup mashed potato
125g borage leaves, roughly chopped
pinch salt
4 cups chicken stock

Put all ingredients (with as much stock as will fit) into a blender and process until borage is finely chopped. Pour into a saucepan, stir in remaining stock. Serve hot, or cold.

Cucumber Salad with Borage
1 cup sour cream
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
1/2 teaspoon celery seed or a pinch of celery salt
1/8 to 1/4 cup green onions, finely chopped
1 teaspoon sugar
salt and pepper
3 cucumbers, thinly sliced
1/4 cup young borage leaves, finely chopped

Combine the sour cream, vinegar, celery seed, green onions and sugar. Stir to combine. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Add the cucumbers and mix well, so all are coated. Refrigerate until ready to serve. Just prior to serving, transfer the salad to a decorative serving bowl and garnish with borage flowers.

Rice Pilaf with Fresh Borage
1 cup brown rice
2 cups water
4 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 medium onion
1/2 teaspoon cumin
salt and pepper to taste
1 cup raisins
2 zucchini, cubed
10-12 button mushrooms, shredded thinly
6-8 borage leaves, well washed and finely chopped

Heat oil in a frypan and lightly fry onion until transparent. Add washed rice and stir several minutes. Add zucchini, mushroom, cumin and seasonings and stir for a further 5 minutes. Pour in water, mix well, cover, bring to the boil and simmer for 20 minutes. Add raisins and simmer another 20 minutes or until water is absorbed and rice is soft and chewy. Add borage leaves, stir well, cover and leave for 10 minutes before serving.

Warning: Do not use borage while pregnant or breastfeeding, or if you suffer from epilepsy or schizophrenia. Touching the borage plant can cause dermatitis in those with sensitive skin. Recommended for external use only. Avoid excessive or long-term use.

I find borage leaves unpalatable no matter how young they are. The flowers, however, are delightful to eat and retain just a hint of cucumber. I like to eat them fresh in the garden, but they certainly can be added to salads, omelets and yogurt. You can also freeze them in ice cube trays (add a flower to each compartment and top with water) or you can candy the flowers. Make sure the green part of the blossom is off, as it is also hairy.

>They not only give a subtle, refreshing cucumber flavour, but they actually >reduce the temperature of the drink as well.

Thank you for the recipes, but from a physics standpoint, I find the above claim extremely difficult to believe...any explanation of how this might work?

Alex

I got some Borage seeds today (from someone abroad) and was wondering if I could go ahead and plant them?

Ooh~ I wish that I had some borage this year. It usually Herb reseeds for me in the Kitchen Garden, but didn't this year. Foolishly, I did not order any herb seeds by mail this year, so I had to depend on local sources for seeds and no one nearby has any uncommon herb seeds. I love those blue star-like borage blossoms in the garden, but sometimes they are hard to see because they tend to hang down. In my NY herb garden I planted them at the top of a wall so they could be seen easier. I have never been able to get past their hairiness to eat the leaves, esp. raw, but I just saw a reference on-line to their being used in a stuffing in an heirloom Italian ravioli recipe. However, Mr. Google couldn't come up with a recipe for me. Anyone know anything about this use? I like to use the flowers to float on top of a summer punch bowl. Did y'all know that the blue flowers take on a pinkish hue when they come in contact with alcohol? Adelma Simmons at Caprilands put them in her summer punch bowls just about every time that I was there in summer; her punches were pretty potent and the flowers changed color. Think that I will order some seed soon so they can be planted this fall in the garden where I want them to grow. Because they are a cold hardy annual they'll get an early start next spring that way. Ditto my calendulas and mammoth dill. I find that the fall sown annuals are usually earlier, bigger, and healthier than those planted in spring, which is why I encourage them to self-sow whenever possible. I saw a white borage listed in a catalog? Has anyone seen it "in person"? Somehow I don't think it would be as pretty as the blue one...

Maggiejk, check out the results of my Google search, link below. Plenty of recipes using borage in ravioli.

I've never seen white flowering borage, but every plant I've ever grown has had both pink and blue flowers on the same plant. Very pretty.

Here is a link that might be useful: borage in ravioli

My borage is primary white. A number of years back I planted some white borage ("alba" I think was the variety). It has been growing in the vegetable garden ever since - whether I want it or not. ;)

I think I prefer the blue borage but the white is nice too. Same plant, same habit just white flowers. Having grown blue borage for years before that, occasionally I would see a white-flowered plant appear and supposedly that is how someone originally came up with the white-flowered variety.

FataMorgana

Maggie,

When you plant your seeds in the fall, do they grow much before the first frost? Maybe you're in a warmer part of the country?

I grow both blue and white borage. I read somewhere, don't know if it is true or not, that blue borage flowers turn pink once they have been pollinated.

Hello~ Thanks, Daisy for the borage-ravioli link. I had seen some of those links when I looked before, that referred to borage in a ravioli stuffing, but what I wanted was an actual ravioli stuffing recipe, which I didn't find, so I felt that Google had let me down. But, when I used your link, the first site I hit had a recipe! I only perused 2 pages, but it was the only actual recipe found; however, I will substitute spinach for the stinging nettle leaves as we don't get along too well. I know it supposedly loses it's sting when cooked, but just having been badly stung recently, while picking daylily buds by a nettle plant hidden by the daylily, I don't like handling it, even with gloves. I saved the recipe and may try it when I get the borage. And yes, my borage plants usually had some pink flowers on them along with the blue, much like its cousins lungwort, and our lovely native Virginia bluebells, Mertensia virginica. I have a lot of them in my garden that have naturalized in a shady spot under our oak from just a few plants my mother dug from the bank of the Shenandoah River years ago. Lungwort, an herbal flower, has reseeded throughout the garden from a few plants in the herb bed,
and is very pretty with the daffodils. What intrigued me about the borage flowers in the Caprilands punch bowl, was watching them turn from blue to pink in the alchohol-infused liquid. I did not know that it was our friend, the honey bee, who was responsible for the blue flowers on the plants in the garden turning pink. I had assumed it was just because they were older blossoms.
, here in WV, my fall sown annual seeds do not usually germinate until early spring, which is nice, because they appear before I would probably get them planted in the spring, so I have a head start. A patch of cheerful yellow calendulas surprised me this spring beside my front porch where I had scattered the debris from cleaning some seeds last fall. These were seeds from the old-fashioned, small, single flowered species ones purchased years ago from Monticello. Now I will definitely order borage seeds for fall sowing, but will stick with the blue ones.