What happens when you start eating weeds
It started with a nibble. Furtive really. And then another and another. Taste-testing as I weeded my market garden, to see if there really was some commercial potential in these over-looked and mostly maligned plants.
A nice dark-green lambsquarters is my personal favorite.
The best ones are growing in my garlic patch, which I fertilized heavily with the winter remnants of the deep litter bedding in the chicken coop. I discovered another good solid patch down by where we used to keep our pigs last year. These plants thrive on heavy nitrogen deposits, and taste the best when they grow there.
Sorrel is next on my list. It might be higher, but it’s not as easy to find as lambsquarters.
I was introduced to it by a local man who I’ve started selling vegetables to. It’s growing in his garden — on purpose.
A chef at a local restaurant who “gets it” told me that you can use a single leaf of sorrel in place of vinegar in certain recipes. (It has a lemony/peppery/vinegary taste — totally refreshing)
From there, my tasting adventures have spiraled out into perennial sow-thistle:
I didn’t find it that good, but my co-editor Jeremy insists that “people juice that.” It certainly is prevalent in areas of my garden, and I’m rigorous about taking it out where I find it, due to its lateral rooting pattern. As the name suggests (sow thistle), the plant was once given to lactating female pigs. (See also the name “fat hen” for lambsquarters — tell you anything?)
Dandelion leaves can be good, but it took me a while to figure out when they are at their peak flavor-wise (kind of just before they flower). If you clip off the green base, their flowers aren’t bad added to a salad mix or sprinkled on other dishes. Same with lilac (okay, not a weed — but I have a lilac wine and a dandelion wine brewing currently). wild mustard, which I’ve read grows basically everywhere in some form or another (I haven’t found much use in the leaves at the stage I started harvesting them — too small):
I could go on and on, but in short, what happens to you when you start eating weeds is you start seeing potential everywhere.
You start thinking: can I eat that? How can I cook with that? Is there anyone else as crazy as me who I can hook into this strange, yet utterly obvious discovery?
What was once hidden (occult) in plain sight, is revealed, as in that apocryphal gnostic Gospel of Thomas saying, 113:
Rather, the kingdom of the father is spread out over the earth, and people do not see it.
And speaking of esoteric stuff, I’ve begun to notice another more subtle effect that I offer to the reader as merely anecdotal information, rather than any kind of scientific proof. I’ve noticed that if I nibble on weeds here and there throughout the day while I’m working, that I’m less hungry.
Sure, this counts as “grazing” literally, and is a dieting technique, but it’s not like I’m out there filling up with “eats, shoots & leaves.” It’s really the occasional nibble, and maybe it’s purely in my head the effect. But I think there could be something here… something experientially real, if not objectively quantifiable.
There’s a little voice inside me that says maybe it has something to do with the “discredited” idea of vitalism that I’ve started exploring elsewhere. That maybe, all this in situ eating has a very different direct effect on the human body than eating pre-packaged or even refrigerated or otherwise stored foods. That it’s partially a question of “life force.”
I’m willing to “go there” in my own line of questioning, but I’m not sure just how far to take it. I found a telling comment on an excellent weed identification and use site:
Commenter “Laura Lu” writes on that post:
I am a qualified horticulturist and want to add that grass will begin to break down and loose it’s life force after 6 seconds from picking so collecting grass and adding it to other ingredients in the blender will take more than 6 seconds and cause a fermentation in the grass. Grass is to be eaten fresh!
I have not gotten into eating grass directly, though I am growing microgreens/shoots of popcorn (which tastes surprisingly like sweet corn). But I do wonder how even a “qualified horiculturist” (whatever that even means) can be able to be so precise as to know exactly how many seconds it takes for “life force” to depart from a plant once it has been picked.
I’m skeptical, but I do really want there to be some objective truth to this kind of proclamation. I want there to be some way that we can measure life force. Perhaps that device/methodology is simply our body and its reactions to other life forms. But if that’s so, how can we say with such certainty it takes six seconds, and not a second more before “life force” departs grasses? And when it departs, where does that mysterious force go?
Until I get the answers to these and other related questions, I’ve started experimenting with “weed salads” — basically composed of whatever edible weeds I can find, along with any unsold extras from my commercial microgreens production, plus herbs from our garden. For example, last night we ate a simply insane “funky salad” composed of:
- Hong vit radish microgreens
- Corn shoots
- Sunflower greens
- Lemon balm
- Wild mint
- Lambsquarters
- Thyme
- Oregano
Plus some avocado thrown in for good measure, topped by (imitation) crab cakes. Normally, I have a fairly ravenous appetite by the end of the day, but I noticed this meal (with a heaping pile of greens) had the same effect as sushi, basically. You feel satiated, but not necessarily “full” and “bloated” like if you eat a big burger and fries.
Anyway, now that I’ve bared it all, I’m curious to hear of other people’s “weed adventures.” What’s good eating where you are? Have you noticed any interesting side effects in your dietary perceptions or your health?
