Posts Tagged ‘wild edible plants’

27 Apr

Milkweed, For People and Others

Posted by wooddogs3 in edible landscaping, home food production, Nose-to-tail vegetables, sustainable, Uncategorized, wild food. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , .


People who live in wetter climates would be surprised, and probably amused, to learn what efforts I’ve made to have common weeds like nettles, burdock, chickweed, and milkweed grow on my property. Common milkweed, Asclepius syraica, has been especially difficult because it really does like moist soil and doesn’t tolerate “dry feet” or alkalinity gracefully.  It took a couple of tries before I got any to germinate, and now I finally have a few plants, which have to be watered and tended and fussed over as if they were orchids until they get stronger. I had to borrow photos because my own milkweed is still a bit on the spindly side.

One might well wonder why I bother. One reason is that I like to eat milkweed, especially the young seed pods, but the shoots and buds are just fine too. It’s a true nose-to-tail vegetable. Another is that I am transitioning from annual veggies to perennial wherever possible, and A. syraica is a good useful perennial that doesn’t require soil disturbance to grow. A third reason is that the flowers are fairly ornamental and send out a cloud of perfume reminiscent of flowery vanilla.

A fourth reason can be seen on this map:

Monarch migration

Notice how the sightings in New Mexico just peter out, while the ones in wetter areas east and west continue northward. Compare this to the maps on the same site for larvae and for milkweed. The migration of monarch butterflies from Mexico to the northern US is a migration of generations. The butterfly that arrives in Montana may be great-great-grandchild to the butterfly that flew north from Michoacon. All along the way they need breeding habitat, and their larvae feed on A. syraica and a couple of other closely related milkweed species. The leg of the journey through desert northern Mexico and southern New Mexico is a barren one, and a few milkweed oases along the way might help more monarchs make it to Colorado and further north. I can’t guarantee it, of course, but it seems worth a try. Adult monarchs will sip nectar from many flower species, but the fate of the larvae is tied to milkweed supply.

You can read more about monarch conservation here:

https://monarchconservation.org

Since my plants are still too young to pick for eating, I won’t be writing about milkweed in the kitchen until next year, but you can obtain the two wonderful field guides by Samuel Thayer, The Forager’s Harvest and Nature’s Garden, and be prepared to forage and cook any common wild edible. I never tire of recommending Thayer’s books, which contain great detail about identification and culinary use at various stages.

4 Jun

A Grand Mess of Greens

Posted by wooddogs3 in cooking, edible landscaping, farmers market, greens, herbs, home food production, Ketogenic diet, Uncategorized, Vegetable dinners, vegetable gardening, wild food. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , .

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I love the various vegetables that the seasons offer me, and for the most part prefer to eat what my environment is offering me fresh that day. I do freeze greens mixtures, though, so that I never run short and have them all winter. Recently I came across a forager’s description of his “56 species calzone” and it made me want to count up the number of species in the large batch of cooked seasoned greens for the freezer  that I’m working on today.

The main components: chard, dock, lambs-quarters, spinach, nettles

Seasonings and minor components: mulberry leaves, hops shoots, lettuce ( about to bolt,) dandelion,  scorzonera, salsify, sunflower, green onion, young leeks, elephant garlic, corn poppies, young grape leaves, marjoram, mint, fennel, mustard, cattail shoots, pea vines, broccoli leaves,  arugula, sow thistle, wild lettuce

Sauteed separately and added: chopped broccoli stems, grape leaves, green garlic

So, 30 species, a thoroughly respectable count for an average early summer morning,  and a potential treasure on winter days when I need to be flooded with the antioxidants of summer. In general I blanch the bulk greens in a fairly small amount of water which I later drink or make soup from, saute the chopped alliums and seasonings, then combine all and saute together for five-ten minutes or until the flavors have blended.
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The true Cretan diet, the one that nourished some of the healthiest and longest-lived people in the world, was based on huge numbers of wild mountainside greens. It’s said that over 300 edible greens grow on Crete, and the average citizen can recognize over a hundred, making my 30 seem limited. But be assured that if you can learn to recognize ten of your local edible weeds and know when to harvest them and how to prepare them, your health and table will improve.  I’ve been tracking the preferences of a vegetable-despising friend, and he will eat greens, sometimes even second helpings, if they don’t look like greens on the plate. An example is the horta egg cake that I make often. He will even eat plain greens if they have a sweet component and a bit of texture, and an easy way to provide this is to douse them in the Quasi-Korean Sauce that I always have in the refrigerator and put a handful of roasted peanuts on top. If you eat bread, toasted sourdough bread crumbs provide delicious crunch on greens sautéed with garlic and chile flakes.
Be aware that greens have a remarkable capacity to absorb and mute flavors, and may need more seasoning than you think. Salt seems to disappear into them, and enough seasoning may be key to getting your loved ones to eat them and even like them. So keep tasting and adjusting until the flavor is right.
If you want to learn to identify some wild greens, gather them at the right stage, and cook them well, there is no better foraging author than John Kallas.

10 Jan

Foraging Know-how

Posted by wooddogs3 in Books worth reading, greens. Tagged: , , , , , , .

I often write about my foraged and semi-foraged edibles, and periodically I like to post something about how to forage safely. With mushrooms, it’s a life-or-death matter to know what you’re doing. With plants there is sometimes a matter of deadliness at stake, but more often you are risking an upset stomach or a ghastly meal. So get it right, which is a fairly easy matter.
Easy instructions for beginners: buy any book by Samuel Thayer or John Kallas. They are both incredibly knowledgable foragers and good writers, and you will still be studying their books years from now and learning new things. I recommend starting with Kallas’s book, which is the comprehensive guide to wild greens that you will use for years or permanently. It is available in Kindle format, which is great because I can pull out my IPad at any time and study a bit without needing to lug around additional books with me. I have had this book since it was published and at least once or twice a month I go back to it to learn something new about using a familiar plant. Then add one of Thayer’s books, or both of them, to learn a new slant about the wild edibles you’ve already learned and learn some new ones. They aren’t available on Kindle, unfortunately, but they are wonderful.
There are a ton of other foraging books out there, and most of them have some special merit or charm, but if I ever had to narrow down my shelf, I would have these three. If you have some long winter evenings ahead of you, study and prepare so that you are ready to hit the ground in spring.
By the way, bear in mind that the original Cretan diet, the one that produced some of the longest-lived and healthiest people in the world, included wild greens as primary vegetables. They are extraordinary nutritional powerhouses and there is no better gift that you can give your body than to incorporate some of them into your diet. And, I hate to bring this up, but don’t just add them to your current diet; use them to replace something that isn’t doing your body good.
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28 May

The Cook’s Treat: Lambs-quarters

Posted by wooddogs3 in Cook's treat, front yard gardening, greens, urban homesteading, wild food. Tagged: , , , , , , .

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I am the cook in our household, and one of the reasons that I love my kitchen work is that I can have cook’s treats, little experimental dishes that I cook up while working on something else and eat standing up in the kitchen. They are something like impromptu tapas for one.

Recently I was preparing large quantities of tender lambs-quarters tips for the freezer, and began to speculate about how a handful of the tops could be turned into a cook’s treat. I have been very happy with some recent experiments that involved pan-frying hops shoots or scorzonera shoots over medium-high heat with just olive oil and salt, but hadn’t tried it with a leafy green vegetable.

I was delighted with the results. I chose about a dozen small tender tips, maybe three inches long on average, and washed them but didn’t make any special effort to dry them beyond setting them on a towel to drain.  While washing them, I set my little 7 inch skillet over medium high heat to heat up. When the pan was hot, and my greens were washed and drained, I put in a glug of good olive oil. I never measure olive oil, but I would guess that the glug that looks right in my small skillet is about 2 tablespoons. You do need enough oil in the pan for the greens to be able to fry in spots. Wearing an apron and standing back a bit from the stove, I threw the greens into the skillet. They spat and hissed ferociously. After a minute, I sprinkled on a generous pinch of salt and turned them roughly. After another minute I turned the heat down to medium and continued to turn them over every minute or two until the stems were tender enough to eat and many ( but not all) of the leaves were browned and crisp. I turned them out onto a small plate, sprinkled on a bit of Fleur de Sel, and ate them hot in between other kitchen tasks. Yum. The flavor is fuller and maybe slightly more bitter than mild lambs-quarters can usually reach, and the crisped leaves crunch delicately between your teeth, like very thin ice.
They have to have enough space in the pan to crisp up and not steam each other into softness. I think that my large skillet would probably hold enough for three people, but not more. To serve more people, possibly one batch could stay hot in the oven while the next was frying, but I haven’t tried it yet. I do know that from thought to finished cook’s treat took about seven minutes, and that the cook, thus treated, returned to her kitchen tasks very happily.

Addendum: I did try making it for more people, and the hold-in-the-oven idea doesn’t work, I regret to say. The greens rapidly go soft, and taste fine in a toasty way but the delicate crunch is lost. So this is a treat for one or two people. But then, it’s very romantic to have a special treat that simply can’t be shared with a larger group.