Posted on 09/24/2022 5:21:00 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Instead of bok choy, one woman opts for a weedy plant called amaranth. In fact, she has an entire list of edible weeds.
Gaye Chan is into what’s known as urban foraging. The University of Hawaii at Manoa professor picks plants we see as unsightly weeds and adds them to her daily diet.
“I started doing research on it and realized the things I had been yanking out for years, cursing them, are actually edible and delicious,” she said.
Instead of bok choy, Chan opts for the weedy plant called amaranth. In fact, she has an entire list of edible weeds that anyone can find for free and consume.
“They are already there likely in your yard, some of them, at least,” she said.
Chan and fellow UH professor Bundit Kanisthakhon are with a group called Eating in Public that teaches people how to choose wild plants and how to cook with them.
Kanisthakhon gets surprised reactions at his cooking demonstrations.
“They say, ‘We didn’t know that it can be eaten.’ That’s something that we can try to educate them more and more by tasting it,” he said.
Weed eating comes with a warning.
Chan said you have to know which plants are safe to eat. She urges people to forage only in areas free of weed and pest poisons, to thoroughly rinse what they gather, and to take only what they need.
“It’s really about looking at resources more holistically and responsibly,” she said.
Eating in Public believes some wild plants have an added bonus.
“A lot of these plants also have tremendous medicinal value, something that I’m just starting to do research on,” Chan said.
“I think it’s good for the system. At least it has a lot of fiber,” Kanisthakhon said.
You can’t beat the convenience.
“When we need some vegetables for dinner, I don’t have to go to the store. I just go outside and cut down some weeds and we’re all set.” Chan said.
To find out more about the dos and don’ts of weed eating, go to the Eating in Public website.
I’m just really not into edibles
I’m sure that Selco can tell us all about the joys of grass soup.
These weed people are simply preparing us for the famines to come.
Euell Gibbons did and a lot more.
I am sure that some of that stuff is edible, but you would have to be careful about what you eat and where it came from. When I was a kid, one of my friends liked to sample weeds from the yard. There was one with a yellow blossom that tasted like pickles. My friend wound up with hepatitis.
👍😂
One year my dad made dandelion wine & they all exploded in the basement!
Our neighbors are huge mushroom aficionados. They pick mushrooms everywhere. They sprinkled spores of some of their favorites on their property and have a huge mushroom feast right outside their door.
They are not only edible, and some are tasty, they have potent medicinal properties.
Poke salat
What? You mean you don’t eat cholla?
That’s why the colonialists brought them here from Europe in the first place, for salads. Wonder why we stopped eating them?
There’s a reason why airlocks are popular…
Purslane. Lots of minerals, antioxidants and omega-3, and it’s probably growing in yoursidewalk.
.
In the US Revolutionary War period soldiers made beer from
spruce needles - because that's what they had -
.
Not twice.
Cattails - can eat the hearts, cooked called Cossack Asparagus, the green seed head can be boiled and eaten like corn, the pollen added to floor for pancakes
The roots can be peeled and the starch extracted from them
They made spruce beer from the bud tips - they are rich in Vitamin C to prevent scurvy
Learned it from the native tribes
Hence the nickname: 'Limeys'.
Our local grocery store sells the greens for salads. I never realized that they could grow to be that big.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.