Mar 11, 2013

Food from the yard and the woods.....





 I have a interest in edible weeds. Been taking a little notes from the internet,and a few specimens from my yard :) Wood Sorrel and some Chickweed...I believe! The wood sorrel is also called sour weed,or sour grass. If you chew on it ...you will know why. If you look close enough you can see how I chewed on the bottom of my sour weed. It was a favorite of mine when I was a child. The white stones I found in the yard. I am going to wash them and write a word of worth on each.
Here's Jaxon chewing on a bit of the sourweed himself. This picture was taken last Spring!


And the chickens love the chickweed...thus the name!


 Some blackberries from our woods a few summers ago.


This is Purslane in my yard last summer....its very healthy for you...it can be eaten raw in a salad or sauteed in olive oil with some seasoning.


Polk Salad or Polk Weed...to cook this..you must boil it and drain the water several times before eating it. Otherwise,you may get a belly cramp. I boil and drain it about three times. It looks a bit like Spinach after it is cooked.




 So do you have a interest in edible weeds? The earth can give some mighty good food from the wild...we just need some knowledge of what and what not to gather for our table. My kids could gather Polk Salad when they were very young :) They came to me one day many years ago with a arm load of it...I cooked it too!


7 comments:

Martha said...

Very interesting, your grandchildren are adorable!
I have eaten some "weeds", but they were not picked by me, this was a big thing at the college where my son was in VT.
Wishing you a great day...

Anonymous said...

My kids always loved the honeysuckle growing along our fence (unfortunately poison ivy grows near it too). It is good to see chickweed is edible, as I have lots of that! And that Polk weed..I recognize that. In the former Yugoslavia, during the 1990's during civil war, people were boiling poison ivy and eating it! They said they also looked at magazines with food pictures and dreamed over them!

Sew Blessed Maw [Judy] said...

We love polk salad.. It grows at the fence line, and We eat it every year..Very tasty.

Charity said...

I'm not sure if it's also wood sorrel, but there is a plant that looks similar with yellow flowers. When I was young, I would eat the seed pods - I called them "pickles!" ;)

marie said...

Love all these great tips about edible weeds...most of this info was new to me! Thanks for taking the time to share it Shelley. Now I have to go out and inspect my back yard! : )

Anonymous said...

Jaxon is so cute in that photo! Makes me just want to hug him!
Wow! I haven't ever eaten any of those plants! They might not even grow here I suppose.
Thanks for the cool post.
Love,
Lily, WA, USA

Earlene said...

Loved looking at your pictures!!!
My neighbor eats polk salad, I would be afraid to eat it.
Adorable children Shelley