One of the pleasures of growing vegetables is being able to cook the most flavorful food on earth. And if you can add flower petals to that dish, it’s an #instantelevation. 

At this time of year we are eating the last of the frozen vegetables from our freezer. I still have tomatoes that we skinned and cooked last year, ready to throw in a pan with olive oil, garlic and a chunk of frozen basil pesto. Given the availability of store-bought flatbreads and crusts, it’s a simple matter to make a garden based pizza in a short amount of time. Tonight I picked some of the older kale leaves off of our 2025 crop of Tuscan kale, and elevated the meal with rose petals from my At Last® rose from Proven Winners. 

At Last® is a fragrant, disease resistant shrub rose. Right now it stops me in my tracks in the garden…and the petals are tasty.

Since I’m currently gluten free, I used a frozen pizza crust from Ugly’s Bakery that I bought at my local Whole Foods. I placed that crust on a parchment lined baking sheet and brushed both sides of it with olive oil. Then I sprinkled on the mixed Italian cheeses, followed by the kale, and then the tomato sauce. Finally, I cut up the mozzarella and put those slices on the top. Since I was liberal with that topping, it melted together as the pizza baked.

Making a tomato sauce out of garden-grown tomatoes is fast and easy. Put a bit of olive oil in a pan and add garlic. Warm so you start to smell the garlic, then add the frozen tomatoes. I season this with basil pesto that we make and freeze in patties every year. We freeze the pesto in disks that are about 4″ around and 1/2″ thick. Two of those make a good amount of pasta with pesto for four people, and they are easily broken so that pieces can be used to season tomato sauces, soups, or other dishes.

When you’re adding flower petals to a pizza, wait until it’s ready to take out of the oven. Open the oven, pull out the tray and sprinkle the flower petals on the top. Push the tray back into the oven and close the door, leaving it in the hot oven for about two or three minutes. After you remove the pizza from the oven, let it sit for three to five minutes before cutting the slices. I use scissors. 

If I was more restrained with the mozzarella the pizza would have more sauce showing. But I love the fresh mozzarella, so why hold back? Here you can see that the rose petals faded a bit when they wilted in the hot oven, but they still add that “you can’t buy this” ingredient that makes a home baked pizza special.

In addition to rose petals, you can use nasturtiums, bee balm or calendula petals on a pizza. In fact, I’m thinking that some of each of these would make a party worthy pie…

It was delicious, for dinner, and it will be equally tasty for breakfast the next day.