If you can't beat them- Enjoy them!

Many times we find ourselves unable to out-smart the weeds in our own back yard. So what better way to take advantage of these plants, than to eat them! Sandy Mason, horticulture educator with University of Illinois Extension, has shared with me a few recipes that may change your mind about killing those weeds!

Mixed Weed and Flower Salad

½ cup small arugula leaves
½ cup young dandelion leaves
½ cup purslane, chopped
1-cup lambsquarters (new)
2 cups spring leaf lettuce
½ cup violet leaves, torn
½ cup violet flowers
¼ cup chives and blossoms
2 tsp. creeping Charlie (ground ivy) or fresh mint, chopped smoked almonds

Dressing:
¼ cup olive oil
1 tablespoon honey
1/3 cup cider vinegar
salt and pepper to taste

Carefully wash all greens and flowers. Dry then mix gently together. Whisk oil, honey, vinegar and salt and pepper. Pour dressing over the salad tossing gently to coat all ingredients. Sprinkle with chopped almonds and serve. Yield: 4 servings

The following recipes are from Billy Joe Tatum's Wild Foods Cookbook and Field Guide by Billy Joe Tatum. This recipe book can be found easily on the web and is very cheap to buy if interested.

Burdock

The basic cooking method for all parts of the burdock is the same. To cook the peeled roots, the flower stems (stripped of their skin), or the washed and drained young leaves, place the plant parts in a saucepan and cover with water. Add a teaspoon of baking soda per quart of water, bring the water to a boil, and pour it off (The water will turn very green.) Cover with fresh water and boil until the vegetable is tender. Leaves will be done in a few minutes; stems or roots will take longer, up to 15 or 20 minutes.

Wild Ginger Tea

Serves 4
4 cups water
1 cup wild ginger roots, cleaned, scraped or scrubbed, and coarsely chopped
12 whole cloves
4 sticks of cinnamon for stirring
Honey for sweetening

1. Bring the water to a rolling boil in a saucepan and add ginger roots and cloves. Cover, lower heat, and simmer for 20 minutes.

2. Strain tea and serve in dainty china cups, each with cinnamon stick for stirring in the honey for sweetening.

Lambsquarters with Wild Rice

Serves 8
Instead of wild rice, you can use either brown or regular white rice, cooked and cooled, in this recipe.

2 cups cooked lamb’s quarters drained and salted to taste
¼ cup melted butter
4 eggs, beaten until frothy
2 cups cooked and cooled wild rice
1 cup milk
6 wild leeks, including 3 or 4 inches of green tops, chopped
1 cup sharp cheddar-type cheese, grated
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
½ teaspoon each crumbled dried thyme, marjoram, and rosemary, OR 1 ½ teaspoons each of the chopped fresh herbs

1. Preheat oven to 350°
2. Combine all ingredients thoroughly and pour into a greased 2-quart casserole.
3. Bake uncovered for 35 minutes, or until firm. Serve hot.

Violet Cloud

Serves 8
This lovely frozen dessert with its hint of lavender is an elegant finish for a feast and it’s also a delightful afternoon refreshment, served alone or with Ginger Sugar Cookies.

1 package of lemon-flavored gelatin dessert
1 cup freshly picked violets, stems removed, packed lightly
1 quart vanilla ice cream
1 cup heavy cream
16 candied violets

1. Make up gelatin dessert according to the directions on the package. Chill until only partly set, not firm.
2. Put violets in the jar of a blender and run blender at high speed until they are almost liquid.
3. Take out about half of the violets and reserve them.
4. Add half of the ice cream to the violet puree in the jar and blend till it is a thick liquid. Empty the jar into a freezer container or metal bowl and repeat the blending with the rest of the ice cream and violets. Add to the first batch.
5. Put bowl of ice cream mixture in freezer.
6. Whip cream until it form stiff peaks.
7. Whip the partially set gelatin till it is frothy.
8. Quickly fold the whipped cream and the ice cream mixture into the fluffed gelatin. Pour into long-stemmed dessert glasses and refrigerate until firm.
9. At serving time, top each glass with a couple of candied violets.

I have found another book filled with great recipes for wild plants. This one, Stalking the Wild Asparagus, by Euell Gibbons is also easy to find on the web. For even more recipes, Dr. Hartzler at Iowa State, referred me to an article in Weeds Today from 1982. The article is entitled "Take a Weed to Lunch" and I have included the article below.

Take a Weed to Lunch

by Roger R. Locandro (Weeds Today/Early Spring 1982)

Exquisite cuisine can be discovered in the wild world of weeds. Some of the finest tasting, most succulent vegetables remain virtually untouched in fields and roadside areas. Americans have generally abandoned the European/Oriental tradition of the utilization of edible and medicinal wild plants. Standard of living appears to play an important role relative to direct dependence or even interest in wild things. As the standard of living increases, people rely more and more on specialized groups of people - farmers - to produce food.

Half of our family originated in a little town in the hills of Sicily and half from the Netherlands. Sicilians are grand masters of plant and fungi taxonomy and "culinary" economic botany. They know what's good, interesting and edible! Sicily is a mountainous, rocky island in the semitropics off southern Italy. Steep-walled valleys, covered with a thin mantle of soil, surrounded by a marine environment, are the basis of the Sicilian agrarian/fishing economy. The soil and geology is such that much of the farming is only subsistence level. Families make every inch and every plant count. While the Netherlands is a considerable contrast, the older European wild plant traditions are still evident.

Teaching weeds with an "interesting and edible flavor" unlocks excitement, interest, and motivation in all students, young and old. The opportunity to teach weed taxonomy, ecology, biochemistry, etc., through the medium of interesting and edible plants, with an ethnic twist, has proved to be very successful. From an infinite population of plant species, I have selected five plants and will claim that they are unbeatable for table fare. Most of the species are easily located and harvested.

1. Dandelion-Taraxacum officinale
2. Pokeweed-Phytolacca americana
3. Greenbrier-Similax rotundifolia
4. Lambsquarters-Chenopodium album
5. Burdock-Arctium minus

Dandelion

In New Jersey we start picking tender, succulent dandelions on southern slopes in early March. Dandelions are ubiquitous and can be found almost anywhere in the world. The rest of the world relishes this wild treat. In Italian we would say "chicoria," somewhat descriptive of the chicory-like leaves of dandelions. An interesting note is the constant increase in the production of domestic dandelions in vegetable growing areas of the United States.

What do you do with a dandelion? Eat it fresh in salad, use it as a vegetable, a main course, or drink it! The youngest plants - those without flowers - are prime. They make the best salad with a dressing of your choice. Dutch style provides a hot dressing of chopped bacon bits, bacon drippings, sugar and vinegar to taste. The hot mix is simply poured over freshly cleaned dandelions and blended together.

As we move from the fresh product, an important lesson is worth learning. Steam, do not boil, vegetables. Boiling effectively removes large quantities of water soluble vitamins and minerals. Steam helps to preserve the nutritional qualities, along with the fine, delicate flavors and textures. Steam the dandelion greens until tender and serve as you would domestic greens -spinach, Swiss chard, etc. The difference here is that the dandelions are fresh, free, and they don't come in plastic bags!

Now for the Sicilian treatment. Take the drained, steamed dandelions or any other green that you wish to use, and cut them into half -inch pieces. Mix them with just enough beaten egg to hold the greens together. Add your favorite Italian grated cheese to taste and a touch of finely chopped garlic. Form hamburger-like patties with a large spoon or with your hands. Fry the patties in olive oil. Drain. Here is another good tip: always drain fried food on a cake rack for a nice dry all-over texture. My only problem is not being able to cook enough dandelion cakes for my family and students. This style, or cuisine, is reflective of Sicily. Limited quantities of wild or garden vegetables, combined with small quantities of eggs and cheese, are artfully stretched to provide a balanced meal for a family.

If you are planning to eat dandelion greens, fresh or raw, harvest only up to the flowering stage. Plant chemistry changes considerably when the flowers are in bloom. But don't stop now. Wait for full bloom, and begin the dandelion wine process. The wine is made from the golden blossoms. The following recipe is from the Dutch side of the family. They settled in New Jersey over two hundred years ago.

DANDELION WINE

10 quarts blossoms, no stems
15 quarts water

Boil water, add blossoms and remove from heat. Allow to stand overnight. Next day simmer for one hour. then strain and retain only the liquid.

Add ten pounds of sugar, eight sliced oranges, eight sliced lemons, two pounds of raisins. Place in large crock or plastic container. Ferment for nine days. Stir twice a day. Place in bottles or jars until fermentation is complete. If the first fermentation does not begin within one or two days, add a cake of bakers' yeast or dry yeast.

Do not seal the jars at this point. After the second fermentation has stopped in the jar or bottle (the time interval depends on the temperature of fermentation), remove sediments by siphoning off the liquid into clean bottles. Again, allow the bottle cap to remain loose until no further fermentation takes place. Seal the bottles, store away, and prepare for some old medication"!

Burdock

Burdock starts to grow in early May in New Jersey. The plant is characterized by large, rhubarb-like leaves and edible stems and roots. This is another plant species enjoyed by the rest of the world. in Africa it is known as "gobo." To Italians it is "cardone." The best part is the young, succulent stem. Don't eat the leaves. Try the roots. . . they're okay as a steamed vegetable but not as good as the stems. Cut the stems into half-inch pieces and steam until tender. Proceed to use the Sicilian formula with the eggs, cheese, garlic and olive oil. You may also enjoy burdock in stews, soups, or served as a cooked vegetable.

Pokeweed

I predict that pokeweed will be completely removed from the wild scene when discovered as a good vegetable. Prepared and served as asparagus, and alongside of asparagus, people will select pokeweed almost every time. The highly succulent, tender, sweet shoots are harvested in the early spring. Pick the shoots up to eighteen inches in length. Strip off all the leaves beginning at the base. Stripping downward removes some of the outside cuticle in the process. Retain the leaves in the whorl at the tip. Cook them along with the stems. if you say pokeweed is poisonous, you're right. The plant contains an alkaloid - phytolacin. Fortunately, the alkaloid is highly soluble and can be easily extracted from the plant tissue. The alkaloid is generally concentrated in the roots, fruits, and leaves and, to a lesser extent, in the stems and young shoots. Cut the prepared shoots into two-inch segments and - break a rule - boil for thirty seconds. Pour off the water and proceed to steam until tender. Serve as you would asparagus, as a vegetable, in soups, or try the Sicilian treatment.

Lambsquarters

Lambsquarters is probably the closest relative to spinach only it's better! Taste tests continue to indicate a high preference for lambsquarters over spinach. Steam and serve. In New England, lambsquarters is canned for winter use. Pick out only the young shoots or allow a couple of large plants to grow and continue to harvest the new side shoots. The more you pick, the more lateral budding is induced.

Greenbrier

The best is saved for last - greenbrier, Rapidly growing vine tips are harvested in the spring and summer. Snap them off the ends of the vine with your fingers. They will crack where the tender shoot extends out from last year's woody tissue. Serve as a hot vegetable, add fresh to a lettuce salad, or use the "treatment." This is another Italian delicacy, also known as "rauni." it's hard to believe that such a fine, delicate treat as similax comes from a thorny, green bramble tough enough to be used as a cattle fence.

Not all weeds taste good or are pleasant textured. And be very cautious to avoid plants or plant parts that are poisonous. We spend little time foraging among the sticks and stones and concentrate on the many good and edible plants.

An extended list of eating delicacies include the highly underutilized wild onion (Allium vineale), chickweed (Stellaria media), yellow rocket (Barbarea vulgaris), watercress (Nasturtium officinale), day lily (Hemerocallis fulva), and many others.

Your introduction to edible plants may serve as an entryway to an exciting, dynamic career in plant sciences. From the fields and byways, the classroom and laboratory ... bon apetit!

DISCLAIMER: Before eating edible weeds and wild plants be sure to get an accurate identification of the plants. Also do not eat any weeds which may have been sprayed with pesticides. Be sure to get landowners permission before digging any wild plants.

5/25/04 Dawn Nordby