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Well, this evening I sauted up a couple of my yellow squash, one of my zucchinis' and one of my red spring onions. The first time this year my garden has fed us, won't be long before my tomatos begin to ripen, then comes my Tomato Sandwich Diet, damn!!!! I love it when I get to do that. It'll last me a good two to three months........YUM!!
Lucky you to have veggies so early! We've got a teeny garden planted with 2 kinds of squash, green peppers, tomatoes, watermelon and lettuce. Ours is just getting stated on some baby veggies on the peppers, tiny lettuce and blooms on the squash. Wish I had a green house!
Good for you. I am waiting on my one zucchini to grow a little more. I have 2 yellow squash ready to cook and will mix all of them to make zucchini bread. I am just not sure why my zucchini and squash are not happy, they bloom and then die :-(
Well, this evening I sauted up a couple of my yellow squash, one of my zucchinis' and one of my red spring onions. The first time this year my garden has fed us, won't be long before my tomatos begin to ripen, then comes my Tomato Sandwich Diet, damn!!!! I love it when I get to do that. It'll last me a good two to three months........YUM!!
Hi Dusty Rhodes,
In my zone 5; and with this cold spring, I have so far had radishes and lettuce. Wilted radish greens certainly make a nice green vegetable and soup ingredient. Should have had peas already.
But why wait? I have a refrigerator full of wild lettuce, leaves and shoots(picked at the right time make a superb rival to asparagus), black locust blossom(like sweet peas), burdock flower stalks, lambs quarters(wild spinach). Also have chick weed, wood sorrel etc. Just dried some bee balm. I will probably get a few more wild carrot shoots. I only bought one bunch of asparagus from the farmers market this year and it almost went bad.
I even eat in March.
late March or early April:
Garlic mustard root dressing
young dandelion leaves
chickweed
Garlic mustard pesto
Dandelion root coffee
Dandelion crowns(pretty much as good as brussel sprouts(one trick is to cover the dandelion entirely or with a thick mulch. It follows the same principle to delay the excessive dandelion bitter defense like potatoes do with solanine when exposed to light. On a large dandelion, it will create a large white crown with little bitterness as is and can be boiled out almost completely.
wild carrot roots
wild parsnip roots
thistle roots
With April comes :
violet leaves
thistle flower stalks
young canadian thistle as a pot herb(like a hearty spinach). Even I was surprised since most thistles cannot be subdued like nettles as a pot herb. I have repeated the experience below serving it to others. This is a particularly stubborn and noxious weed that is very satisfying to turn the tables to a good table fair.
[SIZE=2]I pick them in quantity when the plant is under 1 foot tall, then rinse them to remove dirt and bugs. I find that rinsing (under a stream of water) tends to disable the prickers to a noticeable extent. I cut the plant's stem with scissors via gloved hands, but rinse the leaves with bare hands. Then I cook them in water or stock (the latter is tastier) and the prickers are fully disabled. I then puree the leaves with a good quantity of milk (or milk substitute), season to taste with onion, garlic, salt, etc. and have a cream soup. I also put it in quiche or savory pancakes. I tell my friends I'm serving them something special, but don't say what until after they have tasted it and have exclaimed how good it is. You do NOT have to remove the prickers by hand from the raw plant, so it is not a fiddly process. It's a great green vegetable source."[/SIZE]
ostrich fern, solomons seal, and milk weed shoots that meets or exceeds asparagus.
field onion.
docs like curly doc
Too many to list in May.
and I am sure I have forgotten some. I just found good sources of basswood trees for next year's salad.
You see, the trouble is most of our food is based on agrarian, annual food crops or large fruits. Those rarely get going until later whereas winter annals, perennials and biennials are taking advantage of their stored energy.
Though even carrots are treated as an annual. Yet, even if you don't get them as late as the early spring, you can still eat the young shoot if you want in the early summer. Its comparable to radish salvage when it will not store its energy in the bulb because of early heat. The bulb will be small and tough, but this means it shifted its meristem to a thick immature flower stalk which can be peeled and eaten just like the radish bulb. I liken it to a late recovery crop, just like carrot shoots.
Well, this evening I sauted up a couple of my yellow squash, one of my zucchinis' and one of my red spring onions. The first time this year my garden has fed us, won't be long before my tomatos begin to ripen, then comes my Tomato Sandwich Diet, damn!!!! I love it when I get to do that. It'll last me a good two to three months........YUM!!
wow, we are nowhere near there yet, but the farmers market has so much good stuff I know what you mean about going vegetarian. I have a fridge so full of veggies I don't know where to start. Tonight it will be turnip and beet greens or maybe swiss chard and we are going to grill peaches and pineapple. I almost forgot we will grill sweet pots as well. Oh and the fresh garlic from the Farmers market is so good I don't know how I will be able to go back to the so called fresh garlic in the super markets.
Tomorrow night it is beet and spinach salad with crumbled blue cheese. As soon as we start getting our produce (probably in a few weeks) we too will be set until mid Sept or later.
My first planting of corn is nearly 5 ft tall. I have 5 plantings in all. I plant, let the plants get up about 6 inches then plant another row. I do a white corn variety, "Incredible" by name, large ears, very sweet. About half of it I will eat raw as I'm movin' around, working in the garden, really tasty. And....my Sunflowers are about 6 ft. tall already, no flowers yet, just growing stalks and leaves.
In my zone 5; and with this cold spring, I have so far had radishes and lettuce. Wilted radish greens certainly make a nice green vegetable and soup ingredient. Should have had peas already.
But why wait? I have a refrigerator full of wild lettuce, leaves and shoots(picked at the right time make a superb rival to asparagus), black locust blossom(like sweet peas), burdock flower stalks, lambs quarters(wild spinach). Also have chick weed, wood sorrel etc. Just dried some bee balm. I will probably get a few more wild carrot shoots. I only bought one bunch of asparagus from the farmers market this year and it almost went bad.
I even eat in March.
late March or early April:
Garlic mustard root dressing
young dandelion leaves
chickweed
Garlic mustard pesto
Dandelion root coffee
Dandelion crowns(pretty much as good as brussel sprouts(one trick is to cover the dandelion entirely or with a thick mulch. It follows the same principle to delay the excessive dandelion bitter defense like potatoes do with solanine when exposed to light. On a large dandelion, it will create a large white crown with little bitterness as is and can be boiled out almost completely.
wild carrot roots
wild parsnip roots
thistle roots
With April comes :
violet leaves
thistle flower stalks
young canadian thistle as a pot herb(like a hearty spinach). Even I was surprised since most thistles cannot be subdued like nettles as a pot herb. I have repeated the experience below serving it to others. This is a particularly stubborn and noxious weed that is very satisfying to turn the tables to a good table fair.
[SIZE=2]I pick them in quantity when the plant is under 1 foot tall, then rinse them to remove dirt and bugs. I find that rinsing (under a stream of water) tends to disable the prickers to a noticeable extent. I cut the plant's stem with scissors via gloved hands, but rinse the leaves with bare hands. Then I cook them in water or stock (the latter is tastier) and the prickers are fully disabled. I then puree the leaves with a good quantity of milk (or milk substitute), season to taste with onion, garlic, salt, etc. and have a cream soup. I also put it in quiche or savory pancakes. I tell my friends I'm serving them something special, but don't say what until after they have tasted it and have exclaimed how good it is. You do NOT have to remove the prickers by hand from the raw plant, so it is not a fiddly process. It's a great green vegetable source."[/SIZE]
ostrich fern, solomons seal, and milk weed shoots that meets or exceeds asparagus.
field onion.
docs like curly doc
Too many to list in May.
and I am sure I have forgotten some. I just found good sources of basswood trees for next year's salad.
You see, the trouble is most of our food is based on agrarian, annual food crops or large fruits. Those rarely get going until later whereas winter annals, perennials and biennials are taking advantage of their stored energy.
Though even carrots are treated as an annual. Yet, even if you don't get them as late as the early spring, you can still eat the young shoot if you want in the early summer. Its comparable to radish salvage when it will not store its energy in the bulb because of early heat. The bulb will be small and tough, but this means it shifted its meristem to a thick immature flower stalk which can be peeled and eaten just like the radish bulb. I liken it to a late recovery crop, just like carrot shoots.
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Dandelion root coffee - ???
What do you do with chickweed?
How do you prepare violet leaves, solomon's seal?
The basal rosette form is even rather difficult to distinguish from dandelion. Sometimes a red midrib and fine hairs on the midrib is about it until it flowers.
Dig up and clean the roots well which will be a nice light yellow orange when you are done. Then chop up the roots until they are about 1 inch pieces(a few pulses from a food processor) . Then roast at 250 for 2 hours until dry and a dark brown. Then just put it in the coffee grinder and grind as usual and adjust for strength.
People have been drinking it for centuries and you can buy it. Its a lot cheaper to stop spraying the lawn though.
Taraxacum officinale actually means "disorder remedy".
Dandelion is very dense nutritionally and it was actually considered medical. Back in the day after winter, there was often a nutritional deficiency and dandelion usually provided.
For some its an acquired taste, but I like it better than coffee with milk. When its black, I would probably prefer coffee, but once you get to about 1/3 milk to dandelion, it surpasses any coffee I have ever had.
That is really not surprising to me because my favorite coffee(coffee and chicory blend) with ice cream was this:
I just eat it raw. Be sure you have the right one but there is an easy full proof test. When you pull the stems there will be an inner part that remains attached if done slowly. It should taste like corn silk. Also can be cooked like spinach.
How do you prepare violet leaves?
Just as a lettuce replacement. Its very mild and goes well with stronger greens. Can also be cooked like spinach. Cut them because the ro
solomon's seal?
Treat like asparagus but I think its better. Just remember, like asparagus, its a long lived perennial and do not over pick it and/or even assist in its propagation. You can also eat the starchy rhizome but false solomon's seal I believe is better. Though I would only take them from big colonies.
Though now I do have my own lettuce. In the wild, the season is shifting to lambs quarters(arguably the best cooked green there is), burdoc flower stalks, wild carrot shoots, pepper weed, daisy greens etc.
So instead of eating 4 months out of the year fresh, its 8 months. Then its what I preserve.
No need for a news letter. You want Euell Gibbons, Dean Jordan at eattheweeds.com and Sam Thayer's two books.
Gwynedd1 and Dusty you both have some pretty impressive gardening skills. It all sounds pretty yummy.
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'mind if we just trot around behind you and learn all sorts of good stuff?
