Eat your Weedies

[MikeH]

Interesting to see how the "weeds" have far more minerals than domesticated vegetables, often by a very wide margin. Even some of the popular powerhouse vegetables often are outperformed - spinach, kale, carrots.

Q: Anyone cultivating weeds?
A: Everyone
Q: Anyone actively encouraging select weeds?
A:

Joyce has a soft spot for chicory because of its blue flowers. I don't but I've changed my thinking on it. The root roasted, ground, and brewed in a moka pot makes a very acceptable cappuccino-type coffee. Carrot tops make an excellent pesto. Leftover carrot pesto added to roasted root vegetable soup adds a wonderful flavour. Substituting lambs quarters for carrot tops would provide an all season pesto.

Attachments:

[MikeH]

Recipes

• Burdock Bread with Asiago, Onion and Rosemary
  
• Chickweed and Shrimp Curry
  
• Dandelion Quiche
  
• Dandelion Bread
  
• Ground Ivy Ale
  
• Common Mallow Harira
  
• Plantain Leaf Tea, and Infused Oil
  
• Plantain Seed Bread
  
• Purslane Potato Salad
  
• Red Clover Corn Bread
  
• Self Heal Infused Oil and Salve
  
• Stinging Nettle and Sesame Rice
  

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[oxbowfarm]

We eat the chickweed. The hoophouses get overrun with chickweed in the winter. It is kind of an amazing cold weather plant. It flowers in January in there.

[richardw]

For us the only weeds that are used in salads are chickweed in winter when greens are in short supply and the very youngest leafs of yarrow in summer

[oxbowfarm]

We've also used lambsquarters Chenopodium album, redroot pigweed Amaranthus retroflexus, and wintercress Barbarea vulgaris. The wintercress is supposedly an escaped garden vegetable, it's pretty good this time of year. Its also another one that gets huge in the winter hoophouse.

[raymondo]

I occasionally add fat hen to salads, but that's about the limit of my weedie adventures. I would probably use chickweed if I had it.

[12540dumont]

I've let the purslane run wild, and put it out for the chickens, and put it in salad. I'll eat lambsquarters, but without frost, I still have loads of NZ Spinach! And Ottawa's Chinese Cabbage grows so well here, it's almost like a weed! I cut it 1 inch above the ground and it comes back.

Chickory grows even in the driveway here, and I'm pretty sure it crossed with my chickory greens.

I'd love to have a recipe for carrot top pesto! Boy do I have carrot tops! I've been feeding them to my brother's goats and horse.

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[steev]

Wild mustard (I think it's introduced black mustard) is an important winter green for me. I eat lots of Miner's lettuce and chickweed (when the critters don't beat me to it). Wild dock is good, although I prefer Patience dock (only for its size). I like salsify enough that I transplant it from my clients' yards (weeding, they think; foraging, I know) to the farm. I've not yet gotten the hang of dandelions, but I will, as I like chicories. Same with tumbleweed (Russian thistle). I enjoy nettles when i find them. My soil is getting rich enough that the shepherd's purse is worth harvesting. Purslane is a very valued volunteer crop.

Wish I could get the flat-leaf parsley, cilantro, and big-leaf arugula to naturalize and self-seed abundantly; someday, maybe. I wish they were "weeds" on the farm.

I really wish someone could tell me a way to enjoy star thistle

[MikeH]

Dec 10, 2012 19:15:19 GMT -5 12540dumont said:

I'd love to have a recipe for carrot top pesto! Boy do I have carrot tops! I've been feeding them to my brother's goats and horse.

From www.seasonalbrooklyn.com/2010/05/carrot-green-hazelnut-pesto.html

1 large bunch of carrot greens, large stems removed
1/4 c. parsley
3/4 c. toasted hazelnuts
1/2 c. grated parmesan reggiano
1 large or 2 small minced garlic cloves
juice from 1/2 lemon
1/2 c. olive oil
1/4 tsp. crushed red pepper (optional)

Combine first 6 ingredients in food processor. With motor running, stream in olive oil and blend. Season to taste with salt and crushed red pepper.


I wasn't sure what one large bunch of carrot greens meant so I filled one of those those 3"x8"x12" plastic containers that salad greens come in. When it came to prepping, I filled the food processor to the top with carrot greens which was about half of what I had. I packed the 1/4 cup with parsley and whizzed away. I added a bit more parsley until I got the taste that I wanted. It seemed a bit dry but I decided not to add any more oil. When I cooked the pasta, I kept some of the pasta water and added it to the pesto that I was going to add to the pasta. We had enough for a meal and leftovers for lunch and half the amount is frozen. The remaining half of carrot tops I prepared substituting roasted oats for the nuts. The food processor did a good job of chopping everything into a pesto consistency but the oats were still chewy. I think that next time I'd cook them first before roasting them. I ended up adding the oat pesto to our daily roast vegetable soup. Fifteen minutes in the pressure cooker and no chewy oats and what a fantastic soup.

[mountaindweller]

There are a lot of edible and medicinal weeds around here but they are often sprayed on in order to eradicate them because they threaten our native vegetation (however new housing highways and tourist resorts don't threaten our native vegeation). If you eat weeds you must know about the site, they are weeds because they can tolerate high levels of poisons.

[ottawagardener]

I eat all sorts of weeds especially chenopodium, amaranth, purslane and dandelion.

[ottawagardener]

I recently saw an article on nutritional content and weeds versus cultivated vegetables and for the life of me can't remember where. If I think of it, I'll let you know.

[hortusbrambonii]

I like to cook with for example nettles, sow thistle, Chenopodiums, accidental amaranths, and small cresslike Cardamine species..

[mountaindweller]

small dandelion leaves are a nice addition in salads. Most of the weeds need a long time to prepare. You can make a really nice wine with dandelion flowers and with other edible flowers too, but I tried only dandelion.
And you can eat native nettles (I tried it) but they do sting much more than the European ones.

[Deleted]

I would like to try beechnuts, miner's lettuce, and edible bracken ferns, which are supposed to be like asparagus.

I have also found salal, red huckleberry, and am growing them.