Spring - The Foodie Season

People say that Summer is the best time of the year for fresh produce, but Spring is "not half bad," to make a Yorkshire understatement.  You have to buy or grow the good stuff of Summer, like tomatoes.  In Spring the edible goodies are, literally, growing like weeds.  That's because most of them are weeds.

Nettles. So nutritious that they are good for whatever ails you. Touch only with gloves and tongs until dried or cooked, or you'll tingle - not in a good way - for a day or so.

Nettles are one of my favorite wild foods.  I love the tea, made from leaves desiccated in the dehydrator until crumbly.  I love the fresh greens, cooked like spinach and substituted for spinach in any recipe, but without the slimy, unappetizing gooey black mass that cooked spinach becomes.

I understand that there are contests around the world to see who can eat the most raw nettle leaves without vomiting, despite the sting.  I've never tried it (and probably never will), but supposedly you can roll a fresh leaf upside-down, from base to edge, and eat it raw without getting stung.  I think I'll skip.  Nettles are too good cooked to bother.  Creamed nettles, nettle pesto, nettle dip, nettle green sauce, nettle fak'a hoy - the last two are African recipes worth dying for.  It's probably unfair of me not to print the recipes here.  Sorry, I can't give away all my secrets.

Dock. If you get "nettled," grab a leaf of dock and squeeze the juice out of it onto the sting, and it will reduce the zing.

Another workhorse of the un-rototilled garden is dock.  Dock is used as a green or potherb, and has a slightly lemony, faintly sour taste.  We like it in spring soup, for chilly days.  Dock doesn't reduce as much as other greens when cooked.  Because it likes disturbed ground, it often pops up in the garden before the domesticated vegetables are even in the ground.

Last year's Japanese Knotweed (which looks a lot like bamboo when growing). Find a patch in fall or winter so you know where to "shop" for the shoots in Spring.

I prefer many of the wild weeds to their more commonly available domestic counterparts.  Just as I prefer nettles to spinach, I would rather eat Japanese Knotweed any day over asparagus.  Asparagus is nasty.  The stalks are either like chewing on the branches of small, flavorless trees (undercooked), or mushy rolls of wet newspaper (overcooked).  Yuck. 

The flavor of Knotweed isn't like asparagus.  It actually has a flavor.  It's just a little tart, and the texture has a little crunch to it.  It's good enough prepared simply, sauteed in butter or oil with salt and pepper, that you may never try it any other way.  It's the young shoots - eight inches tall or less - that you eat this way.  Older, taller shoots can be peeled and sliced and used like rhubarb.  Don't confuse it with Poke, another Spring shoot which grows under last year's stalks; Poke needs to be cooked in two changes of water.  

Dandelion greens. Pick these before the flowers come up and the leaves become bitter. You want to catch them when they are still light green and before the leaf edges get very jagged. Plants growing in the shade may be less harsh and more tender.

I do not get it.  I just do not get it.  People spend so much time, effort, and money trying to get rid of their dandelions.  Eat them!  Eat the greens, use the roots for a decaf "coffee," put the flowers in salads or use them to make wine.  Or just let them be - they are so pretty.  How many places can you go in the spring and see people trying to get rid of dandelions - with their yellow flowers - so they can put in things like daffodils - which have yellow flowers.  Besides, dandelions are a huge early spring resource for bees.  If you poison the dandelions, you poison the bees, which will cut into the supply of that worth-it's-weight-in-gold, highly in-demand local honey everybody wants.

Plantain. This common weed, which is everywhere, makes a nice salad green when young.

I went on a plant walk, and one of my fellow walkers told me that he is highly allergic to bee stings.  When he gets stung, he mashes a plantain leaf in his mouth to release the juices, and puts it on the sting like a poultice.  I got stung on the face a couple times (veil fail while working the hives), so I tried it out.  I munched up the leaf, stuck it on the stings, and kept it there about 15 minutes.  I also got stung on the hand, and I didn't do the plantain thing on that sting.  The stings on my face did not swell, did not turn red, and did not itch.  The hand sting drove me crazy for a week. Apparently one of the properties of plantain is that it removes toxins. Good to know.

Plantain leaf close-up showing the distinctive "guitar strings" structure where the stem meets the leaf. This is an identifying feature of the plant, if you make a horizontal cut across the bottom of the leaf with your fingernail.

Please don't think that reading this brief essay gives you enough information to go out and safely start eating your backyard weeds.  As I tell my foraging students, get a book! Go out with someone who knows what they are doing. Look at Wildman Steve Brill's website, or Sunny Savage's Youtube videos or VeriaLiving TV shows.  Whenever you try a new food, take just a little the first time, until you gain experience with both identifying and eating wild foods.

Once you start eating wild foods, you'll be amazed at how many there are around, and how prolifically they grow.  They are there for the taking. Spring is here, and it's time to eat some weeds!