Whoops!

A post or two ago I cited wintercress (barbarea vulgaris) as "creasy greens." Turns out that's not so, as I found by reading Wildman Steve Brill's entry on it in his Identifying and Harvesting Edible and Medicinal Plants in Wild (and not so wild) Places. The form of wintercress grown in the South and called creasy greens as actually barbarea verna. I didn't see this bit earlier in reading his book. My apologies for any confusion!

Spring Greens and God's Green Tonic: Medicine for Body and Soul

A day or so ago I wandered around our hillside below our balcony and gathered many new and flourishing spring greens. There were three or four great growths of wintercress (barbaria vulgaris), also known in the south as creasy greens. I found numerous dandelions, not yet flowered (and thus not as bitter as they get later in the season), mats and mats of chickweed, wild chives and wild onions. There's also a whole slew of plants I haven't yet identified, so I don't know if they are edible or not. I gathered up about 3 of my plastic grocery bags worth and started grinning. I remember a post just like this one about a year ago. . . yup. Here it is. This hillside of ours is very fertile for foraging. I have to remember to ask that it NOT get weed-wacked. My neighbor is an industrious type and half the time I'm about to go harvest a ton of red clover flowers and BAM, he's out there weed-wacking them. Ah well. Have to do better this year.

Our elderly neighbor Fred broke his leg back in January and has been in and out of hospitals and nursing homes since. We brought him home last Saturday, where he gets around in his wheelchair, waiting for his leg to heal enough for him to walk again. He's one of those tough, wiry guys who is basically healthy as a horse but for his fragile bones and the rheumatoid arthritis. He's never taken pharmaceuticals, or rarely. It's funny when docs or other medics first talk to him. They always ask him what medications he's on and he always says "none." He does take nutritional supplements, but no drugs. Compare this to many elderly folks who take umpteen meds every day from killer statin drugs to blood pressure meds to this and that and then this one to combat the side effects of the others.... Anyway, Fred.

I put all the dandelion greens, some of the creasy greens, a bunch of the chickweed and a lot of wild onions and chives into a big pot of cold water with a couple of onions, some heads of garlic that were going soft and time to toss 'em, some cayenne pepper, a tablespoon or two of apple cider vinegar and set it to boil. Once it got a hard boil going, I turned it to simmer for an hour or so. The cider vinegar will help extract all the rich vitamins and minerals from the veggies into the broth. To finish it before straining, I added a tablespoon of some powdered garlic and onion and herbs that I'd made a while back from veggies and herbs I dried. Not bad, if I say so myself. This is a powerful spring tonic, this broth.

Vitamins and minerals in dandelions: beta carotene (more than is in carrots), calcium, iron, vitamins B1, B2, B5, B6, B12, C, E, P, D and biotin, inositol, potassium, phosphorus, magnesium and zinc. And lots of all of those. Plus, in this broth, it's tasty and easily absorbed in the body. It'll do wonders for Fred. Wintercress is also highly nutritious and at this early stage in spring, quite tasty. Later it gets bitter as hell, and to some, it'll be too bitter even now, but not for me or Fred. We know that bitter is medicine for soul and body. You can see a good picture of wintercress here. Once you find this plant and ID it, you'll notice it every spring from now on. My eyes simply know now to look for it in early spring. The bright green lobes of the leaves will catch your peripheral vision easily.

I got three quarts of the broth--good for a start! Tonight I'll cook up the mess of creasy greens with some onion and bacon, and the chickweed, bless its soul, is going to be salad with some red onion and hard boiled eggs. This is fine eating, and free!

Do make some vitamin rich broth for your family. This is easy, simple to do, and your body will much appreciate its cleansing and healing properties.

Onwards,

HM

Early Spring Foraging

Two days ago it was a lovely day--sun shining, warm with just a hint of crispy chill in the air. I headed down to the garden to see what might be coming up. A lot of the weeds I look for grow in disturbed areas--such as our big garden plot. It needs to be plowed again to get it ready for planting in May, but right now it is covered with dead weeds and the old vines and stalks of last summer's tomatoes and corn.

I found wild onions all over the place--in the garden, on various hillsides, back in the woods; this valley is full of them. I harvested a big bag of them. This takes some digging down to loosen all the roots, then brushing off as much dirt from them as possible. I found yellow dock growing too, although it doesn't have that lovely sour citrusy flavor just yet. I dug up the complete plants and got both the leaves and the roots. I want to make more yellow dock root tincture, which is very good for the liver.

Wintercress (barbaria vulgaris) was also present. This is a member of the mustard family and it is an early spring green. Down south it is avidly harvested and eaten as "creasy greens." That's a wintercress leaf you see at the top of this blog. The leaves are a dark, glossy green. It grows in a basal rosette and later it will send up a center stalk to flower, a pretty yellow flower. When you see a field simply glowing with yellow a little later in the spring, that's probably wintercress. It's a bitter green, but this early, it isn't too bitter. I got a big bag of these as well. Free food! And very nutritious food as well. There's a good description of wintercress at Prodigal Gardens, in the Herbwalk section for March.

Here's a bit more info on wintercress from Mother Earth News:

Winter cress—a mustard—is rich in vitamins and has a slightly peppery flavor that goes well in mixed salads. The young winter leaves are also excellent shredded, flavored with chopped green onion, vinegar, salt, and sugar, and topped with minced bacon (drippings and all). Later in spring the greens take on a bitterness which can be removed by boiling in two waters. When the bloom develops, the leaves become too bitter to eat . . . but the buds can be cooked briefly—no more than 5 minutes overall—in two waters and served like the broccoli they resemble. Lemon butter and Hollandaise sauce are good additions to this wild vegetable.

I plan on harvesting more of the wintercress while it is in it's not to bitter stage. In a few weeks, it will be too bitter even for me. When I got home, I rinsed the wintercress three times in a big pot of water, then cooked it only in the water that remained on this leaves, thus steaming it more or less. I greatly enjoyed mine, but Michael didn't care for it as much. He loves lambsquarters, as do I, but not all greens are a delicious as lambsquarters. I'll eat it and use it in casseroles and slip a few raw leaves into salads.

I also harvested a few early dandelions, roots, leaves and all. Dandelions are not bitter at this stage, in early spring before they flowers. So it is a great time to get all that you can find as dandelions are very nutritious. Here's what Wildman Steve Brill has to say about dandelion leaves:

The leaves are more nutritious than anything you can buy. They're higher in beta carotene than carrots. The iron and calcium content is phenomenal, greater than spinach. You also get vitamins B1, B2, B5, B6, B12, C, E, P, and D, biotin, inositol, potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, and zinc by using a tasty, free vegetable that grows on virutally every lawn. The root contains the sugar inulin, plus many medicinal substances.

And here's what Euell Gibbons, master forager, has to say:

"Ridiculous as it sounds, we might be better off nutritionally if we threw away the crops that we so laboriously raise in our fields and gardens and ate the weeds that grow with no encouragement from us—indeed they grow despite all our strenuous efforts to eradicate them.”

“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?

So we ate the wintercress for dinner that night. The next day I put all the wild onions, curly dock leaves and dandelions in a big pot of water, added some dried cayenne peppers and lots of chopped garlic, and simmered it for an hour or so. This makes a wonderful spring tonic broth. Oh, I did add an organic, vegetarian boullion cube for a bit more flavor. This broth I will either use as a soup base, or I'll just drink it warm or cold. I'll give some to a couple of older folks here who could probably use some extra rich nutrition that the broth will supply.

It is still too early here for many of the plants I love, such as plantain. But it'll be coming up soon. I'm planning on harvesting as much wild food as I can--it'll help our food budget, and we'll get a nutritional boost as well. You can't beat that!

HM