The feral lunch
I enjoy challenging myself. I threaten to kick my own ass, and however it plays out, I learn about myself and usually expand my personal comfort levels. This week I challenged myself to eat from my yard for one meal each day I am home.
Today it took me about twenty minutes to pick and prepare my lunch:
Asparagus: raw, from my garden.
Cleavers: lightly steamed, with butter and salt.
Mixed greens salad consisting of: chicory, dandelion, lemon balm, garlic mustard, wild (opium) lettuce, plantain, mint, and raspberry leaves, topped with violet flowers, a stray garden green onion, and a homegrown, kitchen fermented strawberry blackberry vinaigrette.
Asparagus is a perennial vegetable. It’s fairly easy to grow, by crown or by seed. The ferny foliage after the harvest finishes make a beautiful plant in its own right. Fresh asparagus, really, needs nothing other than a mouth to appreciate it. It is nothing like canned asparagus, and even frozen asparagus does not have the charm of that which is still as vibrantly alive going into one’s mouth as it was ten seconds ago rooted in earth. Plus, asparagus makes your pee smell funny, alerting you to the toxins passing out of your body, as asparagus is a good detoxifier plus diuretic. Asparagus has a ton of healthy side effects. Food is medicine!
Cleavers were called “sticky weed” where I grew up, and we had great fun with them as kids. The plant has tentacles that act in a similar manner as velcro. Throw the plant at clothing, and it sticks! Cleavers can be eaten raw, steamed, or baked into foods like lasagna. The texture is still pretty weird, but okay! (Butter and salt, of course, make everything taste better.) Cleavers is another good general detoxifier, plus it is a great mover of the lymphatic system. Again, food is medicine!
Early season greens were often eaten with the notion that the bitterness they contain gets one’s sluggish winter blood a-moving. Personally, I don’t find them all that bitter, but I do like the variety of taste in the eight kinds of abundant greens in my yard. Greens are often high in calcium, as well as many vitamins and minerals. Many are detoxifiers, as the folklore attests. In the mid-mid-west, dandelions are starting to blossom, and these greens are the most bitter. Once a plant has blossomed, greens are not as young and tasty anymore, though quite palatable. They’re also useful to put in soups, or to use as seasoning. Both dandelion and chicory roots can be roasted and made into a tea/coffee drink.
Lemon balm is an herb of general well being. It can be dried or used fresh as a seasoning, made into a potpourri, tea, wine or medicinal syrup. Garlic mustard is considered an invasive exotic, and that means there is always a healthy patch to harvest. Garlic mustard can be dried and used as a seasoning or a green (the older the leaves are, the more pungent they are). I like to make a pesto from garlic mustard, lemon balm, and whatever else is green and looks good enough to throw into a food processor, along with enough olive oil (or other oil) to make it smooth. Tasty things like pine nuts, sun dried tomatoes, and pungent cheese (like asiago or parmesan) add to the flavor.
Wild lettuce, also known as lettuce opium, is considered an invasive weed in my state. I myself cannot attest to the opium-like-inducing effects of wild lettuce, but that is an interesting health benefit, to be sure (reducing anxiety and pain). Plantain is a plant that grows best where people walk. Its leaves are used as a poultice (chew it up and spit it out) for insect bites, wounds, or rashes. Mint and raspberry leaves are cultivated plants in many yards. Mint is often insanely vigorous and tasty in tea. Raspberry leaves also make an excellent tea and are good in mixed greens salads. Raspberry leaves are good for menstrual health. The most nutrition in the leaf becomes available just before the fruits are formed (now!).
As always, make sure you properly identify any wild plant before consuming it. Know how to prepare it. Having someone teach you first hand is ideal, though not always an option. Wild vegetables are not any scarier than cultivated ones, as long as you have the knowledge. It can be a bit intimidating to teach yourself, but it is not impossible, especially if you are normally an intuitive person and have a good guide book. If you tend to have allergies, take it easy at first, trying only a little.
Any and all of these greens leaves can be dried for later use, ensuring an abundant supply of good tasting greens. All greens are high in vitamins and minerals, especially if they are wild varieties growing in healthy lively soil. Do we see a pattern in my lunch? Food is medicine! I’m eating organic food that I lifted nary a finger to help along, only harvesting what I need for my nourishment. Most of the plants are weeds! I pay no one for the produce, cause no one else to do work on my behalf, plus I get to “play” outside while “working” for my food—gotta love that hunter gatherer ethos!
