GranolaBox

Coming home with a bag full of zingy bright greens in the winter is an easy, nonsexual way to impress your spouse.

Luckily, there are literally fields of salads around here, because behind our neighborhood is a creek, and behind that is really large nature preserve.

When I first started thinking about wild sustenance, I had this vague idea that the good food would probably be UP and BEHIND the hills where no boat-footed size nine-and-a-halfs like myself go trampling down everything.

But when I started looking, I realized the hills were covered with semi-mature hardwoods, which shut out light and discouraged the ground covers. Plus, they were drier. So really, there isn’t tons to eat up there in terms of greens and berries. What the hills offer are gazillions of high-protein ACORNS.

Nope, the juicy stuff is down here, by the creek, along the clearings.

Like this lovely field of wild salad.

Just don’t gather your salads along Dog Alley. Everyone here knows where Dog Alley is. Dog Alley is well fertilized.

What we have here is ‘wild lettuce,’ to the left, and Garlic Mustard to the right.

Wild lettuce is a pretty half-assed attempt at identification, but suffice to say, it’s mild and good. It may actually be baby Curly Dock. Also mild and good.

Still, even this baby form of ‘wild lettuce’ may challenge those with immature palettes.

Immature palettes aren’t discussed a lot in today’s poptart world, but many post-industrials are put off by the bitterness in even baby wild greens. The bitter element used to be prized by springtime foragers as a tonic, to wake up the liver and get the lymph flowing after a winter of stagnation. And they were right — these greens are a GAZILLION times more nutrient-packed then any commercial variety, even if those commercial varieties weren’t raised in dead soil fertilized by oil gunk.

But, they can pose a challenge if you’ve never encountered the bitter part of your palette.

Fortunately, Garlic Mustard appeals even to the palette-challenged. This is wild food for the timid. Not only is its shape and bright peppy color unmistakable, its taste sweet and mild, but you can gather it ALL YEAR LONG for fresh eating, and it NEVER grows bitter, only bigger! This is a huge departure from most wild greens. And you can strip grocery bags’ worth of leaves in the fall in minutes, and make an amazing pesto.

Technically, this guy’s an invader, but he falls in the ‘Beatles’ or ‘Antonio Banderas’ category of welcome ones.

Greens I’m 90% Sure Of

Wow, this can be tough, but I think I have this narrowed down.

This seems to be watercress. Watercress is wonderfully nutritious, but since you do pick it out of shallow streams, you have to consider the water supply. Some people actually go to the trouble of treating watercress in halozone before eating. Yum.

This cute little guy to the left is goose grass. Goose grass just screams “eat me.” But he’s so small at the moment, it seems unsporting. The guy on the right? Elusive, for now.

UPDATE: the right belongs to the Geum family. Indians made tinctures from the root and used it as a mild astringent and gargle, for starters. Like so many other neighborhood standouts, it belongs to the rose family.

This groovy-looking furry alpine plant sort of reminded me of roseroot, which is delicious and medicinal. Didn’t taste like much, but you could get a pretty substantial drink out of the leaves if you needed one. I’ll update when I figure this out, unless someone here can educate me.

UPDATE: I’ve been told that this plant is a mullein … a common or woolly mullein, say. This plant is ungodly useful. How amazing is this plant? I’ll have to pull one or two when it matures and try out its powers.

Filed under: EWAKI on February 10th, 2008