'Paleo' Nutrition Blogger Will Go to Jail if He Does Not Recant

By GaryNorth

Freedom of speech? Surely, you jest.

This man got diabetes. He started a blog on treating diabetes. He broke the law by doing this. He is not licensed to promote such opinions.

He promotes the so-called “paleo” diet: low carbohydrates. (The diet is not “paleo.” It’s capitalist. I have explained this here.)

He criticizes the establishment’s “carbs are OK” Party Line. That called down the wrath of the government on him.

Chapter 90, Article 25 of the North Carolina General Statutes makes it a misdemeanor to “practice dietetics or nutrition” without a license. According to the law, “practicing” nutrition includes “assessing the nutritional needs of individuals and groups” and “providing nutrition counseling.”

If he does not rewrite 3 years of posts, he must take down his site. If he refuses, and if he is convicted (after an expensive legal fight), he will go to jail.

When he was hospitalized with diabetes in February 2009, he decided to avoid the fate of his grandmother, who eventually died of the disease. He embraced the low-carb, high-protein Paleo diet, also known as the “caveman” or “hunter-gatherer” diet. The diet, he said, made him drug- and insulin-free within 30 days. By May of that year, he had lost 45 pounds and decided to start a blog about his success.

But this past January the state diatetics and nutrition board decided Cooksey’s blog – Diabetes-Warrior.net – violated state law. The nutritional advice Cooksey provides on the site amounts to “practicing nutrition,” the board’s director says, and in North Carolina that’s something you need a license to do.

Unless Cooksey completely rewrites his 3-year-old blog, he could be sued by the licensing board. If he loses the lawsuit and refuses to take down the blog, he could face up to 120 days in jail.

The board’s director says Cooksey has a First Amendment right to blog about his diet, but he can’t encourage others to adopt it unless the state has certified him as a dietitian or nutritionist.
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End Excerpt

Read the rest of the article here. At Lew Rockwell. One of the best and most interesting sites on the Web.

Well, folks, looks like every blogger who has written about actual, real-live nutrition will have to rewrite their blogs or recant or face jail in this land of the sniveling slaves.

When my brother moved here a few years ago he was insulin-dependent Type 2 diabetic. We live a basically low-carb lifestyle (except for my love for potatoes), and within a few months he was insulin-free. Bingo. Easy. Probably would work for MOST Type 2 diabetics.

But NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Can't talk about it. Can't recommend it. Why? Because we don't  have the permission of the State to discuss something as elemental and common sense as diet and nutrition. Without a permission slip from the State. What utter crap.

I don't know if Indiana has this same law as North Carolina, but I expect I'll find out one of these days. In the meantime, forage for summer's feast of wild greens and eat REAL food. :)

Onwards,
HM

Foraging!

(That's a pix of what tempts Claire into the stream--watercress!)

Found this description of a woman foraging in colonial America in a novel I'm reading (An Echo in the Bone by Diana Gabaldon. This series of Gabaldon novels make wonderful reading, by the way. I love the Claire and Jamie books. :) Claire is an herbalist and a doctor (and a time traveler).

Excerpt

Spring had sprung, and the creek was rising. Swelled by melting snow and fed by hundreds of tiny waterfalls that trickled and leapt down the mountain's face, it roared past by feet, exuberant with spray. I could feel cold on my face, and knew that I'd be wet to the knees within minutes, but it didn't matter. The fresh green arrowhead and pickerweed rimmed the banks, some plants dragged out of the soil by the rising water and whirled downstream, more hanging on by their roots for dear life, leaves trailing in the racing wash. Dark mats of cress swirled under the water, close by the sheltering banks. And fresh green plants were what I wanted.

My gathering basket was half full of fiddleheads and ramp shoots. A nice big lot of tender new cress, crisp and cold from the stream, would top off the winter's vitamin C deficiency very well. I took off my shoes and stockings, and after a moment's hesitation, took off my gown and shawl as well and hung them over a tree branch. The air was chilly in the shade of the silver birches that overhung the creek here, and I shivered a bit but ignored the cold, kirtling up my shift before wading into the stream.

That cold was harder to ignore. I gasped, and nearly dropped the basket, but found my footing among the slippery rocks and made my way toward the nearest mat of tempting dark green. Within seconds, my legs were numb, and I'd lost any sense of cold in the enthusiasm of forager's frenzy and salad hunger.

End excerpt

Oh, gads. I know JUST what that feels like! Foraging frenzy! It's so true. And here's I've got to wait two months (at least). Sigh.

Makes me hungry just thinking about it.

HM

What is Garlic Mustard?

Garlic Mustard (Alliaria officinalis) is a hearty, dark green herbaceous plant. Its leaves are arrowhead to heart shaped, scalloped-edged and deeply veined, growing up to 5 inches across. A cold weather plant, garlic mustard flourishes from late fall to early spring. It can be seen in fields, ditches, disturbed soils, near creeks, on trail edges and in open woodlands. A biennial, garlic mustard spends its first year as a basal rosette, with leaves growing close to the ground. In its second year, it sends up a flowering stalk that grows to about 3 feet. The leaves have a strong garlic odor when crushed.

Garlic mustard is considered an invasive, noxious weed. The Plant Conservation Alliance posts it on their Least Wanted list, maintaining that it poses a severe threat to native plants and animals in forest ecosystems. Basically, garlic mustard out-competes other plants, using up available light, moisture, space and nutrients from the soil, leaving less for native plants. As deer don’t care for the garlic taste, they won’t eat garlic mustard. It is prolific and can take over large wooded areas.

On the other hand, garlic mustard provides a nutrient-rich somewhat bitter green that can be eaten raw in salads (a few leaves at a time as it is bitter) or steamed, sautéed or lightly boiled. Garlic mustard contains high contents of vitamins A and C and it is rich in folic acid, vitamin B6 and manganese. It is a good source of potassium as well. Old time mountain folks used to gather fresh wild greens and used them as spring tonics to spruce up their health after a long, torpid winter. That is still a good idea and garlic mustard fits the bill as a healthy, nutritious wild green.

While many people won’t care for the slightly bitter flavor of garlic mustard, others love it. A good use of this wild herb is in making pesto. Gather a good bunch of garlic mustard when it is at the young basal rosette stage, wash it and chop it up. Mix it with olive oil, chopped garlic, parmesean cheese and pine nuts or walnuts for a surprisingly delicious pesto. Freeze the pesto in ice cube trays and use the pesto cubes to flavor soups and stews. Or simply keep it in jars in the refrigerator. The garlic mustard pesto loses its bitterness prepared this way, but remains pungent and flavorful.

Medicinally, garlic mustard is antiseptic. Juice from the leaves can be used to cleanse skin ulcers or wounds. Garlic mustard tea contains most of the plant’s vitamins and minerals and gives a definite nutritional boost to anyone who feels depleted or slightly ill.

High Food Prices? Look Around Outside...

The cost of food just keeps going up and up. Just the other day we heard about peanut butter going up by 40%! (A national catastrophe! as my brother says.)

I was heading out on my normal afternoon's walk and took a look around. From where I stood outside the door, I could see plantain, dandelion, lady's thumb (pictured), a few remaining lambsquarters, now gone to seed, a bunch of some kind of mint, a really nice healthy looking mullein plant, lots of mugwort, some curly dock plants, a few red clovers, and a bit of wood sorrel.

Walking down the road, I saw walnuts galore from the black walnut tree, and some Queen Anne's Lace. And persimmons from the persimmon tree. And pine trees across the road.

While the cost of grocery store foods have surged ever upward, all of the food plants mentioned above are still free and available for the harvest with a wee bit of work on my part.

While I find plantain a bit too fibrous to eat, if I needed or wanted its nutritional value, I'd add it to a pot of water for a vegetable broth. Ditto with all the plants I just mentioned. If you're feeling run down and sickly, pick a bunch of these wild vegetables and green and make yourself some healing broth with them.

Some of these plants are greens for eating, some have medicinal uses, but all have a lot of nutritional value, full of vitamins and minerals.

It can take a while when you're new to identifying plants in the wild. But I will tell you this--I first starting learning this stuff about 5 years ago. While there's still zillions of plants I don't know, there's now a lot of them that I recognize easily. Once you're had that EUREKA moment and identify a plant--you'll then see it everywhere for a while. And you'll know it from then on, like a good buddy.

With grocery costs spiraling higher, consider learning to forage some of these green plants, nuts, berries. Learn which have edible roots (like Queen Anne's Lace--but be careful, there's some toxic lookalikes of Queen Anne's lace, so leave this one to experts). Learn which greens are better at what times of year. When you learn some of this, you can start harvesting and cut your grocery bills.

We all love lambsquarters here. It's a spinach like green and quite tasty. Highly nutritious--better for you than spinach, actually. So when it is flourishing, growing wildly everywhere, I harvest it, blanch it, freeze it, and we eat this lucious green instead of the $1.70 package of frozen spinach or $1.99 to $2.99 bags of fresh spinach from the store. See what I mean? That's money I don't have to spend, I can keep it (or more likely, spend it on something else...)

I gotta go, but I'll be back. I think for a while, I will focus on various plants ...

HM

3 "Weeds" to Leave in Your Garden (Until they're big enough to eat)

(lambsquarters close up)

There are common garden weeds which are not only edible, but are highly nutritious whether served in salad or cooked lightly as one would spinach. The trick is to learn to recognize them at all stages of their life--as tiny young plants or as flourishing adults. That's a young one is the pix above.

We live in southern Indiana, so I'm talking about my bioregion, which would include a lot of the Midwest (though maybe not the prairie areas). If you live in the Northwest, Southwest, your biogregion is no doubt quite a bit different. But if you're in most of the continental 48 states, then you could find lambsquarters in your garden, since it is common pretty much all across the country. Lambsquarters likes disturbed soil--as you find in gardens and other border areas where mankind lives. It grows in cities, in the country, and is one of those ubiquitious fellas who are found all over the place. Once you learn to identify them, you'll see them everywhere.

So check your garden! We're lucky to have lots of little lambys growing. I'm letting them get big enough to eat and then I'll pick them. But for now, they're welcome to grow. In former posts, I've written about lambsquarters here and here as well as lots of other places in this blog. Just look under the category lambsquarters. They are highly nutritious and tasty (not to mention, grow without any effort on your part and FREE).

A few days ago, I "weeded" our Amish friend's garden, which had a whole slew of lambsquarters. In fact, the LQ basically covered the area where they had planted celery! So I was lucky enough to pick all that. I processed it all by taking the leaves off the stems (edible but tough), then blanching or scalding them in boiling water, then drainging, cooling, and packaging them up for the freezer. So far I have 7 quarts in the freezer, with one more big batch of lambsquarters left to go. If you're lucky to find big areas of lambsquarters, do freeze them. They keep well and they're very welcome in the wintertime.

Purslane is another "weed" I let grow in the garden. I've talked about purslane in both the links I posted above for LQ. Also highly nutritious, purslane has the added benefit of being a great plant source of Omega-3. I like these as a salad green and we eat a lot of it in the summer. They don't freeze well, but you can pickle the stems. I haven't tried to dry it, but I might try that this year. You can find lots of pictures of purslane by going to Google Images and typing in purslane. That's what I do when I need to see a pix of a plant--very useful for identifying plants. It grows in gardens mostly--that's where I've seen most of it anyway. It's another plant that grows all over the country, north to south and east to west. It's very tasty and makes a really nice addition to salads. You can eat it as a potherb too, but I prefer it in salads. In Turkey, it's a national dish. Try it in a dish of browned ground beef, pork or lamb, rice, tomatoes and add a bunch of purslane. YUM.

The other of the three weeds I mentioned that I leave in the garden is woods sorrel. It's a light, lemony kind of plant. You can find a good pix of it, as well as other edible wild plants in this article of Wildman Steve Brill's. Check it out! This article includes mushrooms, berries, and a bunch of wild greens. I've written about woods sorrel here (among other plants). I find it in the garden all the time. And it is one of those I definitely leave til it's big enough to eat.

When it comes to weeds, if you can't beat 'em, eat 'em! These three, lambsquarters, purslane, and woods sorrel are all delicious and very good for you. If you keep an organic garden, as we do, then you don't have any worries about pesticides, herbicides, etc. Just wonderful, free food. As the world crashes down among us, these are good guys to keep your eyes open for. They'll help keep you alive and healthy.

Onwards!

HM

A Forager's Hunger

Man, am I ever hungry for a wild salad. Chickweed and dandelion and woods sorrel, with some wild onions and garlic. Maybe add to that some of my marinated dried tomatoes and garlic. I've got my eyes peeled for new, fresh, wild foods every time I go outside, but I'm afraid it is still too early. My foraging journal from last year says that March 5th was too early. Only some wild alliums were around. The next date is March 20th, and now we're getting somewhere, for that's when wintercress showed up.

There are a few mats of chickweed around, but they're not looking all that spunky. The plants look tired and crushed by winter's cold. Yes, they'll spring back and start growing, getting lush and ready for a hungry harvester, but not today. Probably not for a few weeks yet.

If you start foraging wild foods, I highly recommend keeping a foraging journal from year to year. Last year I kept one faithfully, right up until July 24th and then I quit. I imagine I was awfully busy with harvesting, drying, canning and whatnot, but I KNOW I kept foraging until November. I'll just have to do better and make journal notes all year. There's nothing in last year's journal about all the jerusalem artichokes, black walnuts, evening primrose roots, etc. Sigh.

Anyway, in your journal, keep track of the dates when you first notice wild plants. Write about where you found them, for there's a good chance they'll be there next year as well. Describe the scents, the colors, the greeness, the redness of the berries, etc. Describe all you can. Also mention what you do with the plants you harvest. Do you dry them, freeze them, can them? Take notes on how you process the food, how you cook it, the flavor etc. You'll certainly be glad you did. These notes--even scanty, discontinued ones like mine, are invaluable in coming years foraging. If you are teaching the skill, your journal can help your students learn about the plants and their habitations.

Right now, I'm wishing there was a nice, big, fat journal entry about a wonderful meadow where I found a huge patch of lucious chickweed and wild alliums, with the first tender dandelion leaves growing nearby. I'd be off like a rocket to that meadow! Daydreams, my dear, just daydreams.

I guess what I'll do is get some lambquarters out of the freezer for dinner. I'll have a taste of some wild greens at any rate. And I'll be watching for lady chickweed, you betcha!
HM

Chickweed Delight

Ahhhhhhhhhh. I'm writing in Southern Indiana, hilly country. It's November, just beginning to get cold. And foraging for wild plants has gotten a bit sparse. Many plants have died down for the winter, and the trees have lost their leaves.




Chickweed, surprisingly, likes this time of year, and thank goodness that it does! When visiting a neighbor the other day I noticed some large dandelion leaves sticking out from a ditch, so I returned to investigate. Sure enough I found enough dandelion leaves to fill a bag for the fridge. And since there was a large, frisky, friendly dog, I went on ramble with the pooch to see what else might be around. I found a large amount of some kind of hardy, viney plant with small black berries, but I don't know what it is. Research is required for that one.



And walking even further down an old lane, I found a large, lush patch of chickweed.




(These pictures are from Prodigal Gardens.)

Chickweed is a nutritious, medicinal plant. It grows low to the ground, usually in a sort of mat of thick green growth. It's a lovely little plant, looking very delicate. But for all that, it is a hardy weed and grows all over the place--lawns, fields, gardens. Once you have identified it, you'll begin to see it everywhere. The patch I found is extensive, but you will also see smaller patches growing in your lawn, your neighbor's lawns, around sidewalks, etc. It is difficult to get a good picture of chickweed, but google images for chickweed and you'll see enough different pictures that you'll be able to ID it clearly. One clue for chickweed--it will have tiny hairs running up on one side of the stalk, and on one side only. When it comes to a pair of leaves (opposite), the line of tiny hairs will be on the other side of the stalk. You'll need a magnifying glass to see the hairs. :) It is worth doing this to be sure you'll looking at chickweed.

This time of year, I doubt you'll find it flowering, but when it does, it will have small, white star- like flowers. Stalks, leaves and flowers are all edible/medicinal.

You can easily pull it up with your hand, or take a pair of scissors or a knife and cut off the top few inches. You can get a lot of it with little effort. It makes a nice mild tea, it is good in salads, and it can be lightly steamed as well. Doesn't take long to cook it, just a few minutes. I like the tea and the salad options best. I'll be heading back to the patch for more, because I've also decided to make a salve with it.

Chickweed is full of vitamin and minerals: Vitamin C, A and B, calcium, magnesium, niacin, riboflavin, potassium, thiamin, and zinc. Botanical.com's entry says chickweed is an old wives' remedy for obesity--and I have read many other herbalists say it is good for losing weight. If it is all you are eating, I'm sure it would be! It can be made into a very healing salve, good for sores and skin problems, chapped hands and the like. The tea is laxative, but also good for coughs and colds. You can also use the tea to apply it to rough areas of skin or sores. It's a good, all around useful herb.

If you get a chance to head out doors, keep your eyes open for chickweed. Nature's salads can cure a lot of ills, including the colds and flus that come this time of year. Best of all, chickweed is around when lots of other plants are gone for the winter.

HM

Eating Weeds: How to Keep from Starving

From How to Live on Nothing by Joan Ranson Shortney

I got my copy of this nifty book from a used book seller working with Amazon. I think I paid .08 cents for the book and 4 bucks for shipping. It’s more than worth it! Full of tips and great ideas on living on less, lots less! The copyright is 1968, so a few things are dated, and I wouldn’t use the addresses as sources printed in the book--they’re probably way out of date by now. The first chapter is called “How to Keep from Starving,” and what’s below is excerpted from that. The text is from the book; the links I've supplied, mostly from Wildman Steve Brill's foraging pages and Prodigal Gardens, but other neat foraging pages as well. There’s many webpages for further study if you’re interested in wild edibles, and you should be if you want to eat well!

As the world crashes around us, know that there are foods we can eat for free. Winter will be the hard time, with not that many plants available--but there are always pine needles for vitamin C tea, chickweed can still be found even under the snow, and so on. But for winter you’ll need to store food. That’s what fall is for, so now is the time to be foraging and preparing these wild foods to have them for winter’s cold. Spring brings in a wonderful richness of awakening plant life, packed with all the vitamins and minerals we’ll need then.

(P. 18-22)
How to Eat the Weeds

Below is a list of additional vitamin- and mineral-rich wildings that are free for your picking. Varying only with the region you live in, you can help yourself to a handful from anyone’s garden. People will be glad to get rid of these weeds. Be sure you know what you’re picking. Most plants are safe to eat, but there are a few poisonous plants that resemble edible plants and there are poisonous parts to even old edible familiars, as, for instance, the leaves of rhubarb. You can get books in your library to help you identify the weeds. Don’t rely on the unsupported opinion of a gardener. One’s man’s meat is another man’s poison in this field. I have not included plants that need lengthy treatment to be edible, such as the jack-in-the-pulpit root, which the Indians dried for months before cooking and grinding to flour. It is poisonous when eaten raw. Nor have I included like skunk cabbage, which literally stink and need many vitamin-wasting changes of water to be pleasant. If you wish to eat it on a camping trip, Professor Oliver Perry Medsger in Edible Wild Plants (Macmillan, 1943) will tell you about its preparation. If you find several to your taste in the following list (and sometimes one must cultivate a taste for wildings), by all means explore the field further and broaden your menus. There are many more edible plants that the few I cite. First cook even those I suggest as salad plants. Digestions vary, and even among cultivated vegetables there are plants that some people can eat only cooked and other people can eat only raw. There are also vegetables--both wild and cultivated--which must always be cooked, as in the raw state there are indigestible or toxic ingredients.

GREEN AMARANTH or Pigweed is a weedy relative of red-plumed cockscomb except that pigweed’s plume is green. Eat leaves in spring as salad, later cooked as potherb.

BURDOCK has mature leaves that look like rhubarb’s except that they have a dull finish. (As children, we made baskets of its stickers topped with purple fuzzy flowers.) Burdock is cultivated in Japan for its edible roots. Stems and roots and young flowers stalks can be peeled and steamed. Peeled young stems can be eaten raw in salads. (NB: Use only first year roots, as the second year roots get very woody.)

CRESS, as potherbs or salad greens, including bitter cress, scurvy grass, and the well-known, tremendously vitamin-rich water cress, which should always be eaten raw. (NB: last spring we ate lots of winter cress or creasy greens. Slightly bitter but delicious!)

CHICORY. We’ve told you of the root use of this versatile plant. The basal leaves can be used as salad greens or potherbs. The blanched, second-growth leaves from the root are sold as endive.

CHICKWEED. Use leaves raw for salads or briefly steamed. (See Prodigal Gardens section for more information.)

CATTAIL. Both narrow and broad-leafed varieties are edible. These perennial swamp herbs have ten-foot blunt brown spikes. For spring salad, cut young stems 10 to 12 inches from root and peel off outer skin. Or cook roots, as did the pioneers, or use the starchy root as a meal, ground and dried. It can be added as a root vegetable to stew or boiled with other greens.

CARAWAY. You know the seeds and may have grown the plant in your herb garden. Caraway also grows wild. Young roots, shoots, and tender leaves in late spring can be used to flavor salads. Or use root boiled as vegetable, leaves in spring.

DAYFLOWER. A pretty weed, having three-petaled small blue flowers. Steam leaves in a little water as potherb.

EVENING PRIMROSE. Yellow nocturnally blooming flowers. This plant is cultivated in England for its edible roots, which can be used in stews and soups. In Germany cultivated under the name rampion. Leaves used as a potherb.

GREAT WILLOW HERB OR FIREWEED. Has magenta flowers, long willow-like leaves. Young shoots boiled as asparagus, leaves and young stems as potherbs.

JERUSALEM ARTICHOKE. This plant, with leathery leaves and a yellow flower like a sunflower, yields and edible root with tubers that can be boiled or baked like potatoes.

LAMBQUARTERS. This well-known weed was a favorite of the Indians. Can be eaten raw in salads or later cooked as a green. (We especially love it lightly steamed. It turns an attractive dark green. Mild and delicious, more nutritious than spinach.)

LETTUCE. Both the wild (horseweed) and the prickly are edible. Steam leaves briefly or add to soup.

MALLOW. There are many edible varieties, including cheeses (whose seed pods resemble their name and are edible), high mallow, and whorled or curled mallow. Use leaves and stems as potherbs and young shoots in early spring for salads. Hollyhock is a member of the mallow family and its leaves can be cooked and eaten.

MARSH MARIGOLD, called cowslip. Has heart-shaped leaves and glossy yellow flowers resembling buttercups. Potherbs only, not safe to eat raw. Steam leaves and serve with butter or cream sauce.

MILKWEED. When shoots of common milkweed are a few inches high they can be steamed. Discard first water to remove bitter milky juice. Serve like asparagus. Buds and flowers used by Indians for thickening and flavoring stews and soups. (The link here is to Sam Thayer’s interesting article on milkweed. You can eat lots of different parts of the milkweed, as well as make cordage, and use the milkweed fluff as insulation. Very useful plant.)

MUSTARD. This includes a big family. In addition to wild mustard, there are shepard’s purse, peppergrass, penny cress, and horseradish. Use early leaves for salads or cooked as potherbs. Horseradish root, grated and mixed with vinegar, is a meat accompaniment.

PLANTAIN. I once saw a child picking this most common weed in a city lot. Thinking she was starved for greenery, I was sorry that she had to stoop to plantain for her bouquet. Now, knowing more, I think she may have been told by her mother to collect the dinner vegetable. Steam the leaves briefly or until tender. In China this weed is popular as spring greens.

PURSLANE or Wild Portulaca. Here’s another weed that can be found for sale in Eurpoe and Mexico but that is too often ignored here. This succlent little plant has light-yellow flowers that open briefly on sunny days. Vitamin-rich, the leaves can be used raw in salads or cooked with the fleshy stems as a vegetable or in soup.

SASSAFRAS. This is a tree. Used dried leaves crushed as in Creole cookery for thickening and flavoring soups, fresh young leaves in soups, dried bark of root for a fragrant tea.

SORREL. Mountain or alpine, sheep and wood sorrel may all be used in salads or as potherbs.

THISTLE. Cook tops of Russian and sow thistles when very young; cook roots of elk and Indian thistles. The stinging or great nettle is also edible. Steam the young tops or use them in soups.

End of book excerpt. Well, that's enough food for thought and belly for today. I sincerely hope this information helps you and yours stay alive in tough times.

Handmaiden

Weeds: Plants Treasured by Our Ancestors

By the Handmaiden

Many of the wild edible and medicinal plants gathered by today’s foragers were brought to the Americas by the Pilgrims and other early immigrants. These were plants known to be valuable as food and medicine, and naturally enough early colonists wanted these plants around them in the new world.

In other words, plants that are today disdained as weeds, were highly-desirable plants treasured by our forefathers, who knew of their beneficial uses. Think of the “weeds” that herbicides are created to kill--dandelions, lambs quarters, chickweed, plantain--these plants traveled here with people who brought them as seeds or rootlings. They were planted in herb gardens, but being hardy and prolific, they began to multiply and spread quickly. Today, they are all over the country, having traveled with, and in spite of, people’s efforts.

I have a book called Just Weeds: History, Myths and Uses by Pamela Jones. I bought it used through Amazon for about $10. And it is worth every penny for all the entertaining stories about weeds, which are generally the plants we harvest when foraging. Jones gives historical information, herbal recipes, food recipes, discusses what various herbalists and medical men have written about the plants and their properties; she even mentions magical uses, keeping away bad spirits and the like. This is the kind of book you sit down to read rather than a field guide; it informs you as well as entertains.

Jones writes that most if not all of the widely-foraged weeds were brought by colonists to America, that is, if the plant wasn’t already here in various related species. (Poison ivy was already here, it’s a native.)

Here is a list of a few excellent culinary and medicinal weeds with some background information about them (taken from Just Weeds):

Yarrow--an herb used for wound-healing, is an ancient Eurasian plant. It has been carbon-dated back 60,000 years and was probably known to Egyptian, Indian and Chinese healers. Brought over by the colonists.

Burdock--was known in ancient and medieval times in Europe and was brought over by early immigrants. It has both medicinal and culinary uses--excellent as a blood purifier in the spring (the root), crushed leaves can be applied to mosquito bites; and the stalk can be eaten in the spring or the root eaten in spring and fall.

Black mustard, which grows all over the place--you see its yellow flowers in the spring in fields, was mentioned in the Bible as well as in the Code of Hammurabi in Babylon. Everyone knows of the bright yellow mustard condiment, or honey pepper mustard or spicy dijon. Used for food (the Roman army took the plant with them and ate it as a cooked vegetable) and for medicine (heard of mustard plasters?) Grows worldwide.

Shepherd’s Purse was unknown in the Americas before the Pilgrims. These days, it is a weed of ancient lineage, used for food and medicine. High in Vitamin K, it helps to clot the blood.

Lambs quarters: Originated in the Mediterranean region (as do quite of few of these plants). Also known as pigweed, this family of plants has 60 species. Lambs quarters is an incredibly hardy plant--it can grow in poor soil, and seeds found in an archeology site where they were buried 1700 years ago actually germinated! It was grown as fodder for livestock and poultry, and raised for human food by Indian farmers.

Plantain, which became known as white man’s foot to Native Americans, is a plant so common you probably have never noticed it. It also traveled with the Roman army as it tramped around the world. It is very useful for insect bites, rashes, light burns, sores and wounds and antidote to poison. Crush the leaves and apply them as a poultice to the area affected. The seeds, known as psyllium, are widely used as a laxative. The entire plant is rich in potassium salts, and is a very useful herb to know.

Chicory--you know, that spindly plant with the lovely blue flowers you see at the side of the road--has been cultivated for 5,000 years. Thomas Jefferson sent to Italy for chicory seeds, which he harvested for his table and for cattle fodder. The roots can provide a coffee substitute (or be added to coffee when brewed as the French do). You will also find it in grocery stores as endive, a bitter lettucy green. There’s also a forced form, pale and crisp, that you pay top dollar for. It’s been used medicinally for thousands of years.

Queen Anne’s lace or wild carrot--brought over by colonists. Member of the parsley family, which includes parsnips, celery, parsley, dill and caraway. It also contains poisonous plants such as water hemlock, the deadliest plant in North America. The root of Queen Anne’s lace is carrot-like, and edible. The herb portion (the leaves) of the plant can be decocted and used to wash wounds and boils.

Why Wild Foods?

Why Wild Foods?
By Patricia Neill Boone © 2008

(OK, enough with the copyright stuff or the fancy name. I'll just go by Handmaiden here.)

“We spend millions on herbicides to kill the dandelions in our lawns, while we pay millions more for diet supplements to give ourselves the vitamins and minerals that dandelion could easily furnish.” Euell Gibbons in his essay on Just How Good Are Wild Foods?

In a world that is crumbling before us, and where we might have to live on foods we’ve grown and stored, learning to gather wild foods is an excellent skill to have. It is knowledge that once learned, cannot be taken from you. Even if you lost everything--your job, your family, your prepped gear and foods, you would still be able to eat if you know how to fish and how to forage.

I was reading somewhere how a guy was a POW in Germany in the Second World War. He knew what wild foods to eat and recognized some growing where his prison camp was located in Germany. While many around him died from malnutrition, starvation and disease, his knowledge of the wild nutritious weeds kept him alive.

Wild foods are full of health-giving nutrients, vitamins and minerals. As these elements become more and more rare in our over-processed foods, Americans have become malnourished even as they’ve become obese. We need all the trace minerals, the vitamins, the essential fatty acids, the minerals we can get, and wild foods can give them to you. Here is a wonderful chart of many of the more common wild edibles and their nutritive value.

Purslane and lambs’ quarters, which I found yesterday growing (free!) in my garden, are both high in essential fat, potassium, calcium, phosphorus and vitamin C. We had them in a salad last night. These are weeds, folks, hardy plants that you have to work hard to get rid of. I’ll “get rid” of mine by letting them grow into a good size so that we can more fully enjoy them. With purslane, it is good to just break off the stem and leave the root. The stem will grow back.

These foods, these weeds, essentially, grow all around you wherever you are. Once you learn the plant, you will always recognize it, even driving past a patch of something in a car, you’ll still be able to identify the plant. Learning this skill can save your life, it can provide you with food in hard times, it can be your ticket into a survival group, and best of all, no one can ever take the knowledge from you. Once learned, its yours.

When I go out to forage, I carry a backpack with some essential tools. I suggest you get the tools, keep them in a bag of some sort in your car, and you’ll always be ready to forage wherever you are.

When I first started foraging, I just took a folding knife and some plastic bags for whatever I managed to harvest. As I made more foraging trips, I realized that some other tools would also come in handy. Here’s what I carry these days.

I keep a small backpack in the trunk of my car that holds all my foraging stuff. It’s got bottled water, some Avon Skin-so-Soft bath oil (the best bug repellent in the world), lots of plastic bags, a foraging book with color photos and good ID information and my tools.

The tools are standard gardening tools--a hand trowel, a hand cultivator, a pruning tool, and a root digger. I also have a nifty pruning/gardening multi-tool with two knife blades, one with some saw teeth, a saw and a short root digger. Mine is similar to the one shown in the link, but with less tools. There’s a pair of gloves in the pack as well--you need ‘em for those nettles. I also carry a shovel in the trunk of the car for digging bigger roots.

The book I carry in my pack is Edible Wild Plants: A North American Field Guide by Thomas S. Elias and Peter A. Dykeman. This guide has good photos and good information on each plant, and it isn’t heavy or bulky.

And that’s it--that’s all you’ll need. You don’t have to have the field guide I carry--though I really like this book. Just make sure you have a good guide with color photos and a good description of the plant and its habitat. If you have any doubts about a plant, take a sample--a branch, a shoot, something with the leaves and other key identification aspects, and continue to research it on the web. You’ll soon learn to ID the plants you’re interested in. Good luck and happy hunting!