The premier star of the edible plant world. IIRC, not native to North America, but originally imported as a food crop.
Young leaves are good in salads, older ones can be used in soups. Like older lettuce, they tend to get bitter as it gets bigger.
Posted on 02/14/2009 10:03:07 AM PST by djf
I have decided to start a thread focusing on edible weeds. Many of the common plants we see everyday are edible, and while most are not hugely palatable or nutritious, a few are truly very good.
If you would like to post a recipe, please post recipes related to these plants only.
As always, an extreme amount of caution is advised. It's probably true that 90 percent or so of plants are actually edible, there is a small percentage that if you eat them, you WON'T have to worry about eating again!
Oleander comes to mind, it would take less than two leaves to kill an average person.
So be careful.
Polk Salad must be washed and cooked, washed and cooked, washed and cooked at least three times before it is edible as a green (like turnip greens, mustard greens, collard greens)
POKE SALAD
2 pounds freshly picked, young poke salad leaves (or other greens such as dale, turnip or collard)
1/2 pound thick-sliced bacon
1 medium onion, chopped
Hot sauce
Hard-cooked egg, optional
Wash the poke leaves well. Parboil the leaves and stems twice in a medium saucepan, pouring off the water each time after parboiling. Boil a third time in clean water for 20 to 30 minutes or until tender. Rinse and drain well.
Fry the bacon and remove from the pan. Add the onion and the greens and cook in the bacon dripping about 15-20 minutes or until tender. Add the hot sauce to taste, and serve topped with the bacon and a sliced hard-cooked egg, if desired.
Let me know if you need pictures. I’ll try to find some now.
Yup, Oleander, when Jo-anne’s future husband picked oleander
for her wedding bouquet, you knew the marriage was DOOMED!
Like Sand through an hourglass bump.
POLK SALAD ANNIE
Tony Joe White
(words & music by Tony Joe White)
(Recitation)
If some of ya’ll never been down South too much...
I’m gonna tell you a little bit about this, so that you’ll understand
What I’m talking about
Down there we have a plant that grows out in the
woods and the fields,
looks somethin’ like a turnip green.
Everybody calls it Polk salad. Polk salad.
Used to know a girl that lived down there and
she’d go out in the evenings and pick a mess of it...
Carry it home and cook it for supper, ‘cause that’s about all they had to eat,
But they did all right.
Down in Louisiana Where the alligators grow so mean
There lived a girl that I swear to the world Made the alligators look tame
Polk salad Annie polk salad Annie
Everybody said it was a shame
Cause her mama was working on the chain-gang
(a mean, vicious woman)
Everyday ‘fore supper time She’d go down by the truck patch
And pick her a mess o’ Polk salad And carry it home in a tote sack
Polk salad Annie ‘Gators got you granny
Everybody said it was a shame
‘Cause her mama was aworkin’ on the chain-gang
(a wretched, spiteful, straight-razor totin’ woman,
Lord have mercy. Pick a mess of it)
Her daddy was lazy and no count
Claimed he had a bad back
All her brothers were fit for was stealin’ watermelons out of my truck patch
Polk salad Annie, the gators got your granny
Everybody said it was a shame
Cause her mama was a working’ on the chain gang
(Sock a little polk salad to me, you know I need a mess of it)
Jerusalem artichokes were a favorite when I was a young ‘un.
My backyard is full of dandelions and other various weeds—please come by and have a field day!!! ;-)
My mother cooked some poke salad once. It stank up the whole house. To this day I don’t know what poke tastes like, as I refused to eat anything that smelled that bad.
Do not eat anything that is yellow, red or black.
Most green bugs are ok because they are green because of just eating plant material. The white stuff inside the bugs is either fat or eggs.
Stay away from the legs and wings as they can make a log jam in your intestines.
Remember, you do not have a chitinase, which is the enzyme required to break down the outer shell chitin. Some diet stuff has chitin in it as it will not break down inside a human.
I'm sticking with chocolate and Dr. Thunder.
That’s like turtle. You really have to cook turtle outdoors. Oh. My. God. Worse smell ever in the world.
Ahhhh, my grandmother would take us all out to pick poke greens when we were little. Thanks for the memories.
When I was young I worked for a farmer who made wine from Dandelions. No sense just concentrating on salads.
So what you are warning me about is that when I'm on my hands and knees in the garden this summer, don't eat ALL the bugs i come across but be selective..........good advice, thanks. LOL!
Yeah, mine too. And my husband is a big believer in living off the land, so I had to crank up the memories to make it for him. But he’s a good provider too and nights when he brings home a mess of catfish from our pond, and I’ve gotten some tomatoes out of the garden, made poke greens from the yard and homemade biscuits... well, we feel all is right in the world. Does that make any sense?
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