Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2020 15:49:00 -0400
From: “N.A. Booko”
Subject: Chickweed and Poke Salat . . .
A few days ago wild eatable expert Kim Calhoun mentioned eating native chickweed. No sure how many of you folks gave it a try, but it is something special and there seems to be plenty of it this spring. It seems to be
especially crisp, crunchy and juicy right now.
I have had it twice as a green salad, since she spoke of it. It grows differently at different locations. The sun, soil and moisture play a big part in the taste. I like to find a big dense patch that is growing in a moist shady spot.. I use scissors and clip it off in swaths of about five inches long. Of course you wash it before eating.
Wash it thoroughly. You can put in in the fridge for a couple of hours to make it a little more crisp. Don’t freeze it, it will sprittle out to green nothingness. For salad, I tear it up in small pieces in a bowl. I add cut onion, grated carrot, graded green and yellow squash. At times, this could be a meal by itself.
And then there is Poke salat! Poke weed! The bad boy of the wild woods. Big bold, with purple berries that make the birds drunk and your tummy sick. Do not eat the berries.
I found a few new shoots this morning- They were about six to eight inches high. Thick crisp and reminiscent of asparagus. They snap off easily when very young. Not so as the season progresses. I still eat it well into June, but only snapping off the tall upper shoots. Usually when it blooms begin, that is a good signal to stop eating it.
Some consider eating it just once in the spring as a ‘tonic’- I like it all season it is available.
Old timers, seem to always believe it had to be cooked, rinsed and then cooked for several hours more. It gets very mushy and I feel all the natural vitamins are gone.
Today I cooked a few shoots ( maybe for eight minutes) and hand some homemade cornbread and a glass of soy milk. I usually prefer buttermilk but none on hand.
Both chickweed and Poke Salat are simply, natural things- easy to come by in this complicated world.
N.A.
N.A. Booko- stalking the wild eatable