Harvesting and proccessing Amaranth

This summer Russell decided to grow some Amaranth in the garden. You can eat the leaves when the plants are young and it is similar to a spinach leaf. Once the plant flowers you can harvest the grain to cook like rice or pop like popcorn! But don't get too excited, it really just pops like a seed and doesn't expand much but it does get a nice roasted flavor. Here are some photos to document the process of removing the grains from the flower stalks, which mostly involves rubbing the flower stalks between your hands vigorously to loosen the tiny grains from the plant. Then you have to separate the tiny grains from the also tiny flower particles that also break off from the rubbing. Our harvest (though somewhat decreased by "sharing" some with the birds) was about 1/2 cup of grain from about 8 plants. Our harvesting method was admittedly a bit casual and a second harvest might prove a bit more prosperous.