Eating Green

Chestnut Oak (quercus prinus)

2009-09-03T19:42:00.014-04:00

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The acorns are coming in on the Chestnut oak (quercus prinus), so we went for a walk to gather them from the trees. They begin falling from the ground now through September here in the South. Chestnut oak acorns are typically the first acorns to appear - they are also nearly the largest, about 1" long, and 3/4" wide. Since the leaves have rounded lobes, chestnut oaks are part of the white oak group, and thus the acorns are very mild - the bitter tannin taste is not as strong as those of the red oaks. I find chestnut oak acorns not quite as mild as white oak's (quercus alba - some have no taste of tannin at all) - however, they're still on the tree at this stage, and not yet ripe.

Here's a shot of the huge acorns:

Chestnut oak grows everywhere here, on the dry rocky slopes, and all have acorns - of course most are out of reach. It's fun to gather the first crop straight from the trees when they reach full size - there's no worry about something having already bored into them and spoiled the flesh.

Chestnut oak is easily identified with its large rounded teeth, or shallow rounded lobes along the leaf edges:

Along the way we couldn't help notice all the muscadines, and took some time to gather and snack on some. When they're nearly black they have a sweet bubble gum flavor, though the seeds are somewhat bitter, just like any commercial grape seed:

A closeup:

They're littering the ground beneath this vine, which is sprawling through the pines:

[9/6 update: There's a great way to eat muscadines, especially when you're gathering them from the ground, and you want to make sure they're not rotten. For the most part, you can smell whether they're good or not. There should be a sweet grape smell to the ones on the ground, and they should be still firm . . . if they've begun to ferment you can usually smell it. Those that have split open or become soft have almost always begun to ferment.

I next bite a very small hole out of the top of the muscadine. Now for sure I can smell the insides, as well as taste it a little, to be sure they haven't gone bad. Don't try to bite too large a hole or the contents of the grape will explode all over you. Just basically break the skin.

Then through the small hole I suck out the sweet bubble gum pulp on the inside. It flies right out. I spit out the few small bitter seeds. The pulp really is like bubble gum, and you can chew on it for quite a while. You're then left with the empty dark puckered skin of the grape, which I eat next. It's somewhat tart, but loaded with all the nutrients.

This is the way to truly enjoy a muscadine, rather than swallowing them hole, and crunching them up - the bitter seeds somewhat spoil the flavor. And if the muscadine has begun to rot, and you have a whole mouthful - it's not a pleasant sensation. The seeds of all grapes are bitter - so there's nothing unusual about it. I think the common wild summer grape found throughout the U.S., with the little champagne grapes, have probably the least bitter seeds - and these can be eaten in huge quantities just like you'd eat any other grape.]

Here's my gathering bag full of acorns and muscadines - they're both so large it didn't take long to fill it - we brought along a canvas tote as well:

Back home we divided them up and set them in baskets:

The few muscadines we didn't eat are in a beargrass basket I made when living off the Gila River in southwest New Mexico. I remember gathering the beargrass above the hot spring in Brock Canyon like it was yesterday - the basket still smells of fresh beargrass. The acorns are in a pine needle basket I made camping off the Guadalupe River in the Jemez Region of northern New Mexico. The needles are from the Ponderosa - I like to leave the 'toes' visible, though they can break off.

Acorns are one of the most important wild food sources, but like any starch or grain, most need some processing first. You start by letting them dry out, so the flesh is easy to remove from the shell. So I'll store the acorns in the basket a few days and wait for them to dry.

The next step is leaching out the tannins. First the acorns are shelled. This is easy to do, next to walnuts and hickory nuts, where the thick-shelled nuts need crushed and the flesh needs picked out of crannies. Acorn meat fills the whole shell, and the shell is thin. If you're eating them on the spot, I just bite them in half with my teeth. You can also use a nutcracker.

If the acorns are to be boiled and leached in hot water, they don't need minced. But if they're to be leached in cold water, such as a stream or the tank of your toilet, they need diced up small and put in a bag. The acorns can also be buried whole without shelling to begin the germination process - burying them shelled in marshy soil is another option worth trying. It's similar to how nuts are treated in raw foods - trying to jumpstart the germination process and remove enzyme inhibitors. Except with acorns, the tannin is what you're trying to remove. I think of the tannin as a sort of all-natural preservative - it's found in many wild foods.

Having had a preference for raw foods for many years, most of my experience with acorns has been eating them raw straight from the ground. I'll never forget the first time I ate white oak acorns. I was accompanying someone making a bid on a construction job, and the guy's driveway was just littered with acorns from the white oak (quercus alba). I picked up and cracked one open with my teeth and ate it . . . and no tannin whatsoever! I couldn't believe it, and ate several more.

Our property in Tennessee has several mature white oaks down by the creek - our first year camping there the acorns rained down on our tents all through the Fall. And coming and going from camp I often ate several. These had a trace of tannin, but the more I ate the more I didn't notice it. And they're very filling.

Camping off the Guadalupe River in September in the Jemez Region of northern New Mexico, we were surrounded by gambrel oaks. The trees were loaded with acorns. As the acorns began falling to the ground band-tailed pigeons arrived, cooing in the trees like owls. They spent all day eating acorns. I ate them also but found them, though in the white oak family, with too much tannin to really enjoy. So I shelled them and diced them up and put them in a bag in the river. After one week of leaching in the water the acorns tasted the same. I didn't have any more time to keep leaching, as we were breaking camp in mid-September, and heading south to camp in the Gila.

As a sidenote to this Guadalupe River area, there were not only unlimited acorns, but chokecherries half a mile down the river which I set out on wooden plates in the sun all day - this sweetened and ripened them into perfect dried cherries. There was wild grape everywhere, alfalfa, gooseberries, a wild apple tree covered in large apples, several springs, and tons of rosehips. The rosehips were large and red but with no flavor. They needed dried to bring out the sweetness, and to make removing the seeds easier. We took baskets of apples, acorns, and rose hips down with us to the Gila, and guess what happened? Chipmunks stole our acorns and stashed them in the air filter box of the vehicle - we found out later when we stopped to get an oil and lube.

As far as our chestnut oaks, for now I think I'll try the boil method - about a dozen changes of water. Tom Brown has this idea of taking the processed acorns free of tannin, rolling them in brown sugar, and roasting them in the oven for an hour. It's not the most healthful use of the acorn, but I think it would be a fun thing to bring in to my wild edible plant class for homeschoolers. The kids will love acorns after that!

Georgia Woods

2009-04-02T19:10:00.021-04:00

. I stopped by Autrey Mill Nature Preserve to check out an 1880 farmhouse very similar in size to the cabin I'm about to build, and took a hike through the forest to see what wild foods are out. The Preserve is mostly dank Georgia woods, and the fact that it was periodically raining on and off only made it wetter. Since there is very little sun, there won't be much fruit - but there is still plenty to eat.

Elderberry (Sambucus . . .) is growing in several dense stands not far from the farmhouse. Its wand-like growth habit and stalks covered in warty bumps are distinctive. It also has compound leaflets, anywhere from 5-11, though I usually find 5 on this species common throughout the Atlanta area, both in forest and along waterways:

Both the flowers and berries are edible - the leaves and stems are reported as toxic.

I've gathered huge quantities of the ripe black berries . . . in ditches along raised roads in North Florida, along creeks in the Southern Appalachians, as well as along waterways by our land in Sunbright, Tennessee - and even right in the forest where there's plenty of sun in north Georgia mountains [Pigeon Mountain]. Though there is some debate about the edibility of the ripe berries (some sites say they're possibly emetic, need cooked, or dried, etc.), I've been eating raw elderberries for many years and they are perfectly good raw. We'd pull them right off the red-stemmed corymbs with our teeth like grapes, or turn the corymbs upside down and pull clusters of berries off to throw in our oatmeal. It is a very common wild edible plant, and important food source.

Here is some prickly pear (opuntia . . . ), doing okay even without much sun:

The pads of our native prickly pear in the Southeast are exceptionally mild. Even when old and out of season, once you've cleaned off the spines and glochids the pads are wonderful - a fresh lemony vegetable. This is in strong contrast to the prickly pear of the Southwest, where the old pads are more medicine than food, with flesh that's rather nauseating and lots of tough stringy fibers.

Take a pad that has good coloring and plumpness, and carefully pull it off. Scrape it with a rock or knife. Be patient . . . it usually takes a full five minutes to scrape all the tiny barbed spines (glochids) off the pads - otherwise they'll end up in your tongue and gums, and there to stay for several hours. If there's any kind of flowing water source nearby, it's good to give the pads a final rinse to take away any last miniscule spines. If not wipe the pad with a cloth to make sure it's clean. Blowing on it can also work once the tiny barbs are free.

The first time you bite into a fresh pad it will be a memorable experience - nothing like the bland old nopales you find in ethnic groceries. And what's great about prickly pear is how much food there is. Several pads is a very filling meal - something out West you usually only get in spring, when the pads are young and fresh. But our native opuntia humifusa is edible all year.

The fruit is also great, marketed commerically as 'tunas'. The fruits of our native southeastern prickly pear aren't very large - but they are still good. The best prickly pear fruits tend to be out west - anywhere from the flavor of a sweet steamed beet, to a fruity mix of fig and watermelon. And the tunas can be huge and in great abundance.

As with the pads, it's important to process them on the spot, then give them a final rinse with water or cloth. If you simply gather the fruit without cleaning and throw it in a basket or bag, spines and glochids will interpenetrate everything and become very difficult to remove. Though our native prickly pear fruits are small, many people have planted western varieties out front on their properties - and these can be an excellent food source.

The oregon-grape is here, mahonia bealei - it's from Asia, and has established itself throughout the South:

They often call it 'Leatherleaf Mahonia' here in the South, because we're so far from Oregon - where our native Oregon-grapes are everywhere. The berries are not as far along as the ones down by the Chattahoochee River - there's still no coloring yet:

They're still rather bitter at this stage, but eventually will taste like tart grapes. I've gathered large amounts of them in the mountains of Northern New Mexico.

The muscadine is getting its leaves:

Like most southern counterparts to northern foods, the muscadine greens tends to be tougher and stronger than wild grape greens. The leaves at this stage are still mild and rather edible - only a little astrigency. The tendrils when they first appear are decent also. But as the foliage matures it becomes rather strong. We once packed the leaves into a glass jar camping off Owl Creek down in the Apalachicola region of North Florida. Once the leaves were packed tight, and a lid put on, we allowed them to ferment in the sun for a week. This tenderized and sweetened them immensely . . . it was like muscadine sauerkraut. This can be done with any strong edible wild greens.

The muscadine is everywhere in here, and a great basket material. I don't know that it will produce much fruit in here with so little sun - it depends how open the canopy is. Muscadines are large thick-skinned grapes with a bubble gum-like flavor - an excellent wild food source. They are about as large as the grocery variety, except the seeds are far more edible and not as bitter. With enough sun, such as roadsides or forest edges, muscadine will put out tons and tons of grapes. We gather several baskets every year. If there's one crop you can depend on here in the South, it's muscadines.

Here's an enormous hickory bud opening up:

The bud is so huge because the leaves are compound (one giant leaf coming from one bud is actually composed of several leaflets). Hickory is very distinctive with its spare foliage at the ends of stout twigs, its spare stout branches, and compound leaves:

I find taste and smell to be a far more precise way of pinpointing a plant rather than just a visual. If you rub hickory leaves, your fingers will get that strong unmistakable hickory nut fragrance. Native Americans used to cook their beans wrapped in hickory leaves to impart some of that fragrance to the food.

Hickory nuts are another incredible wild food source. I find the nuts to be one of the most dependable winter food supplies in the South - hickories produce copious amounts of nuts, they will cover the ground all through winter, and many will have nutmeat as fresh as the day it fell from the tree. Avoid nuts with holes - something's already gotten to them. And hickory nuts, just like the way fats cut chile, will take away the strong taste of greens immediately. It's amazing how filling fresh wild nuts are, especially walnuts and hickory nuts. Half a dozen to a dozen nuts can be totally satisfying even when you're very hungry.

[4/3 Update: Just today in fact I wandered Kennesaw Mountain until I found a south-facing slope that was so like the Southwest - exposed rock slabs everywhere, yucca, prickly pear . . . but also tons of hickory nuts. Every single nut I cracked open was perfect. And literally just 3 nuts was totally filling. I'm still working on my technique as far as how to crack them open, but this method seems to work for me okay - I set the nut upright in a dent or pock of a slab so it stays in place. I then come down hard with a rock right on the apex of the nut - smashing right down through it. This causes the nut to be laid wide open, with all the nutmeat accessible, instead of hidden away in woody crannies.

As far as how to pick the nutmeat out - do your best with fingers and teeth, or better, get a large spine to use as a nutpick. Plum spines work okay (Kennesaw is covered in wild plum trees which are in bloom right now), but the tip tends to be brittle. Locust spines are much tougher, especially on the new growth. They'll get all the nutmeat out pretty easily. Bradford pear also has very stout spur branches that end in a spine - they're worth trying, considering how ubiquitous Bradford pear is.]

Japanese honeysuckle is everywhere in the forest:

It is another non-native that has established itself in the wild near cities and developed areas. The cream and white flowers are edible and sweet with a lot of nectar. It's a vine with opposite leaves that tend to be lobed lower down the vine - an easy way to identify it.

Here's the new growth coming out on the pine:

This stalk will soon put out tiny green packets of new needles that are excellent raw, with huge amounts of Vitamin C - once used to cure scurvy. Even the older needles can be diced and steeped to create a very rich Vitamin C tea. The tea is transparent, and might seem just like hot water compared with conventional tannin-stained teas. But the flavor is there, as well as the nutrients.

The dogwood is in flower, and the petals torn away from the flower-base are not bad:

The berries tend to be very bitter.

I come across a patch of fern, and the young unfurling fronds are very, very good, almost as good as bracken (which comes up everywhere in the pine flats of Florida about April):

Fiddleheads can sometimes be tough and strong and hairy. We've tried fermenting these with not much luck. But these ferns shoots in particular are tender, and have almost no hair and a mild flavor - an excellent spring vegetable. Even when the fiddleheads have completely unfurled, but the growth is still relatively new, it's got a mild taste. Here's a whole patch of it:

The greenbriar is putting out new growth:

All of this new growth is edible - the shoot, the leaves, the tendrils. It's very mild and tender - excellent. And there's an infinite supply! Greenbriar is everywhere. Here are two shots of the new growth, plucked from the old green spiny stems:

The berries are also edible, even the ones still on the vine from last year. Greenbriar berries in general tend to be tasteless, but sometimes they can have a slight date-like sweetness:

The flesh on these berries in particular was rather dry, but the hard seeds had a sugary crust and were pleasant to chew on.

Suprisingly, the young leaves of sweetgum are not bad, a decent edible green this time of year:

Whereas the young leaves of tuliptree, even when tiny, are very strong:

The beech has yet to put out its young edible leaves - it's still holding on to last year's leaves:

The new growth on cedar is edible . . . very mild, just like the new leaf growth on any conifer:

Here's Hercules-club (aralia spinosa) in leaf, with its tall spiny stem and huge compound leaves:

As far as I know, not edible.

I found violets:

I like the flowers, but the leaves, though extremely nutritious, seem rather strong to me, even though I've eaten them for many years. I might try steaming them at some point.

Here's some clubmoss, a very primitive plant:

Blackberry in leaf . . . the leaves not so good to eat, but would make a great tea:

Here's blueberry in flower:

I found large shrubby blueberries in flower over and over. It's a very common understory shrub in the South. Even without much sun, these shrubs will put out tremendous quantities of blueberries. The blueberries begin to come in in late April in Florida, and early June up in north Georgia mountains, such as Pigeon Mountain.

Here's heartleaf, a birthwort, with its small bulbous flower I unearthed just above the leaf:

Dock (rumex crispus)

2009-04-01T16:16:00.012-04:00

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The dock is coming in really thick right now. It's abundant at the edge of where they mow. I was able to gather a full canvas tote bag in ten minutes or so, and hardly made a dent in the amount of greens. But I had to pick quickly - there was a guy with a weed trimmer literally 20 feet behind me.

I don't know if it's this particular curly dock (rumex crispus), or it's all this mild, but I could not believe how good the leaves are raw. A slight acid taste, a little like wood sorrel, with only a trace of astringency, if any. Even the older leaves that are dark and somewhat eaten by bugs . . . they tend to have even less astringency than the young leaves. So I went ahead and picked the leaves at all stages, enough to fill a 2 gallon pot.

Here are two closeups of the wavy-edged leaves, a conspicuous feature of curly dock:

At home I steamed them using a waterless steam. I rinsed them off (they're low to the ground, and we've had a lot of rain, so they're somewhat gritty), then stuffed them in a large pot with a lid, and turned it on high for 5 minutes. The greens reduced almost to a tenth in size, became dark, and looked like any other steamed or sauteed greens. There was actually a small pool of water in the bottom from when I rinsed them off - next time I'll remove the water with a salad spinner, and steam them purely in their own juice.

The flavor was excellent. The slight sourness that comes with dock made the leaves taste slightly pickled - they had a pleasant acid taste. I noticed they had a strong cleansing effect also, and like any wild green, they're loaded with nutrients. I've read they were a major food source during the Great Depression.

Dock is in the buckwheat family, a highly edible family of plants, including buckwheat (the seed), rhubarb (the leaf stalk), and dock (the greens). It's best to think of dock as our native buckwheat. Wild dock seeds tend to have a lot of chaff, but I've still eaten them. Out in the Southwest the dock gets huge, with giant leaves - the plant is almost a small bush. The leaves are rather strong, but the seeds have a nice bacon flavor, even with all the chaff. The chaff you ignore like eating grass seed - a lot of chaff, but once you hit the seed inside, it tastes like bread.

The next wave of silverberries (eleagnus ebbingei) have come in, and the berries from these bushes are nearly twice the size. We gathered a bunch of them:

I made a new gathering bag specifically for the purpose of harvesting silverberries. It's important to have both hands free when you're picking food. This bag has a small rope which attaches to a belt loop - I made the bag out of canvas and wire . . . the wire is from a coat hanger I pulled apart, and it keeps the bag open so you don't have to hold it open as you pick:
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However, most of the silverberries we were picking were on bushes and hedges trimmed low to the ground. So a basket set on the ground would have worked fine. It's much easier to gather silverberries on the wild plants that are a mass of sprawling shoots - with the bushes, you often have to get down on the ground and look up underneath the dense foliage to spot all the clusters of berries, then reach in to grab them.

These berries are not only large, they are very sweet - there's quite a bit of flesh on them. I'm saving the seeds separately for my geurilla gardening from the previous silverberry seeds. It will be interesting to see which grow best from seed, and which produce the best harvest.

The light in this photo isn't great, but it shows how speckled with silver the berries are:

The pits are edible, in the sense they are not that hard and you can chew them up. But they have a dry bean flavor that I don't think is good, and it ruins the tart strawberry flavor of the flesh. Besides, it's better to save them for growing. But in a survival situation, who knows - they might be a decent food source.

On the 'bean' note, silverberries (eleagnus spp.) are one of the few nonlegumes that fix nitrogen in the soil via bacteria on the root nodules. And they make fabulous hedges - there's one dense hedge at least 10 feet high with a mockingbird nesting in it . . . the shoots climb on nearly 25 feet up a nearby red maple.

Here's an idea of the size of the berries:

Like most wild berries, the bigger the better - the sweeter, and milder.

I've also noticed the new growth on the common juniper is edible, just like the new growth on other conifers. It's packed with vitamins, and has a very mild juniper resin taste.

Here's a photo of Rachael and Brooke (my daughters, 11 and 9) in front of the azalea that's blooming everywhere:

We eat these azalea flowers all the time. They are very sweet. We just pinch off the base of the flowers and eat the rest. My daughters love them. They're sweet - lot of nectar. The best of all azalea flowers are the orange ones, called 'Flame Azalea'. The flowers are so sweet they taste like Orange Crush.

We've been eating azalea flowers in such abundance for so many years it was a big suprise to me to see that no one else considers them edible. Almost every site I find reports them as toxic. I understand they're in the rhododendron family, with its toxic leaves . . . but I am not at all convinced the flowers are toxic. They are too mild and sweet. It's like everything else with our native wild foods - a lot of suspicious information, that gets repeated endlessly.

However, regardless of my own opinion and experience, this link is worth checking out on the toxicity of all rhododendron species.
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Ripe Silverberries!

2009-03-16T16:44:00.011-04:00

. The Ebbing's silverberries (elaeagnus ebbingei) are now definitely ripe, and I picked a quart of them this morning:

I'm going to have to reverse my former opinion of these silverberries, and rank them very high as a wild food. Ripe berries in March! It's incredible. Those that are red and firm have a slight acid astringency and the flavor of lemon. When they're ripe they soften and almost liquefy into a raspberry/strawberry jam - very, very good. It only took me an hour to pick this quart. The berries still have large pits, so only the rind is edible - but it is very tasty.

We did our second wild edible plant walk at the Chattahoochee River NRA yesterday. I brought the silverberries I'd gathered in a beargrass basket for everyone to try. It's amazing how this coiled basket I made years ago still smells intensely of fresh beargrass. It takes me instantly back to camping in the Gila, gathering the fresh wands of beargrass above the hot spring. The rim of the basket is willow:

We had light rain on and off so no flowers were out for our walk. This is too bad because one part of the trail goes through a small ravine, which before was covered in flowers such as bloodroot and trillium and toothwort - very Appalachian. Bloodroot flowers covered the entire hillside. There is also a lot of spicebush in flower, with their fragrant twigs.

We found plenty to eat on our two hour walk. There were silverberries, unripe Oregon Grapes, redbud flowers; I pulled a young cattail shoot out of a swamp for everyone to try - there are several cattail swamps; we sampled weeds like chickweed and speedwell and onion and dead-nettle. We had a few dandelion flowers, some spiny thistle that was rather strong, violets; the earliest blueberry in flower, large bushes right off the river with tons of white pendant urn-shaped blueberry flowers; red maple keys, black greenbriar berries (carrion flower), rose hips still red from the year before, and young rose leaves . . . we found a lot of elderberry in leaf, both at the river's edge and up in the forest; lots of red buckeye (poisonous), and I dug up the little underground bud of heartleaf (a birthwort). Spring is an exciting time.

Here's one silverberry shoot weighed down with the clusters of silverberries:

And Mishka loves them!

He begged and begged to try some. I finally gave him a bunch in a bowl because I was sick of hand-feeding him. He eats them pits and all. It is actually natural for dogs to eat berries - they're omnivores. Coyotes will not only eat berries when they're ripe, they'll eat all the bear scat after the bear's eaten berries - this was something I witnessed camping long-term up on Pigeon Mtn. I even came across a coyote chasing a turkey once down the dirt road.

Mishka first discovered berries up at Graveyard Fields in August. We camped there for a couple of weeks, and every morning we gathered 6 cups of berries for our morning oatmeal. Mishka would watch us gathering and eating some. He would whine to be fed. So we'd give him some. But eventually it gets old feeding him, and you're like - they're all around you dog, and at your height, go eat! Eventually he did. He even waded in to the thorny blackberry and ate and ate till his fur had lots of juice stains.
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Snow

2009-03-01T19:47:00.004-05:00

Today was our first wild edible plant walk, and it started snowing in the morning. By noon it was coming down heavily and sticking - very unusual for Atlanta. I drove over to the Chattahoochee River in almost blizzard conditions. The flakes were large and blowing thickly. All the edible weeds were covered in snow. And it was still snowing heavily and freezing.

Mishka and I took a hike down the loop trail to see what edible plants I might still be able to point out. It was hard to see anything. And the trail was underwater. It was actually flowing in places (we've had 2 days of heavy rain). Even the beautiful scene of forsythia and oregon-grape flowering side by side was almost invisible in the haze of snow. Here's a photo of it:

Nobody showed up for the walk anyway, considering the weather, so we'll reschedule for next week.

I'm going to come over to this trailhead every day after work to continue to study the plants and harvest weeds for my daily green smoothies. The diversity is incredible, and the bottomlands are rich habitat.

Day 7 going 100% raw was hardly challenging - each day it gets easier. I had a green smoothie with parsley for lunch, and for dinner, my stuffed red bell peppers:

These were so good! Heavy and filling, but simple, and high-enzyme. Here's how I made them:

I soaked 2 cups of sunflower seeds last night. This morning I rinsed them and left them in the strainer. By afternoon the sprouting process had begun. I put them in a food processor with one small bunch of fresh mint (it was so fresh and aromatic and new baby leaves were coming out), a very small bit of red onion, chopped. I put in the juice of 3 small lemons, and a little Real Salt (I prefer Celtic, but don't have it right now - dulse flakes or kelp would be even better). I processed it until everything was smooth. I then spooned it into the peppers.

I also continue to read books on raw foods so mentally I stay focused. This past week I've read Victoria Boutenko's 'Raw Family', '12 Steps to Raw Foods', and 'Green for Life'. I love her approach, and acknowledgement of the addictive nature of cooked food. I'm now reading 'How to Have the Best Odds of Avoiding Degenerative Disease,' by Don Bennett, a guy I know from when we had a strong raw food movement here in Atlanta and Sprout Cafe was open and we met there for potlucks.

A full week accomplished! I haven't lasted that long in years. The first 60 days are the toughest. Then it becomes more habitual. Humans if nothing else are creatures of habit.
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Chattahoochee River

2009-02-28T23:28:00.005-05:00

. We went to the Chattahoochee River NRA to see what edible plants we can find for Sunday's wild food walk. I wasn't expecting much other than what I'd found in the bottomlands along the river. However, it turned out to be a jackpot for common edible lawn weeds. This is one strip along a fence, at the edge of a parking lot:

There's a mowed area around the pavilion, and with the abundance of sun, and low elevation and humidity down by the river, this is prime weed habitat. The greens are mostly clover, chickweed, and dead nettle, with scallions (wild onion/wild garlic) all across the mowed lawn area. There are dandelions also, but with the cloudy skies, only a few are in bloom.

Look how lush the chickweed is:

And the dead-nettle around objects the mower couldn't reach:
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Here's a plant I couldn't identify, no matter how long I pored over field guides and later the internet:

I feel like I know I've seen it before. What weed has smooth square stems, opposite leaves, and tiny terminal clusters of symmetrical flowers with five parts? I don't know. It doesn't taste like much, it may be edible.

[4/1 Update: The plant is Valerianella umbilicata (Corn salad), and highly edible - a once commonly-foraged wild green - it's in the valerian family.]

In the bottomlands there are some beautiful scenes of yellow sprays of forsythia blooming beside oregon grape, with its upright spikes of yellow flowers. I've read in China they eat both the flowers and young leaves of forsythia, so I'll have to try them.

We saw a couple of great blue herons. In fact the top photo is a close up of a heron out on a rock - he's tough to see.

I looked for edible shoots near all the bamboo that was cut down, but couldn't find anything. Maybe it's too early in the year.

The multiflora rose is in leaf now, and there are still a few old hips, but they are tasteless now. We came across a few hackberry trees, lots of greenbriar, cress and chickweed throughout, and of course silverberry. There will be plenty to point out on our walk.

Day 6 going 100% raw wasn't too difficult. It's almost easy now, as long as I don't look back. It's like climbing a mountain - don't even think of turning around.

I started out with a plantain/apple/parsley smoothie that was okay - not a great consistency. Lunch was cantelope - had an off taste. Later a wonderful young coconut - the water was incredible - I didn't really want the fatty flesh, but I ate it anyway. After our trip to the river I had a smoothie with banana, mango, and broccoli rabe (rappini), which I picked out at the grocery store because it looked so fresh and healthy. The baby broccoli inflorescences were even beginning to show some yellow flowers. However it was quite strong in the smoothie (I used half a bunch) and had a strong mustard bite to it. I also need to up the water content in my smoothies so they're not so thick.

This sounds like enough food for the day, but I kept on eating. I had a salad with an avocado dressing I made from an avocado and the juice of two lemons - way too acidic. I'll go back to my tangerine juice. And after the salad I ate 2 ounces of pine nuts. Way too much food. Evenings are tough for me. I'm used to pigging out and numbing out at the end of the day. Now I need to find something to do besides eat!
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Parsley

2009-02-27T20:24:00.008-05:00

. Parsley is incredibly nutritious. This is from A2Z OF HEALTH:

Parsley contains three times as much vitamin C as oranges, twice as much iron as spinach, is rich in vitamin A and contains folate, potassium and calcium. What’s more, parsley is also recognized for its cancer-fighting potential. Some of the potent chemicals in parsley include:

Polyacetylenes, which seem to protect against certain cancer-causing substances found in tobacco smoke. It may also help to regulate the body's production of prostaglandin, which is a powerful tumor promoter.
Coumarins, which help prevent blood clotting, reducing your risk of arterial blockages that can lead to heart attacks.
Flavonoids, some of which act as anti-oxidants that neutralize dangerous free radicals, others that have been shown to prevent or slow the development of some cancers.
Monoterpenes, which are thought to have cancer-delaying properties, especially with breast tumors, and to reduce cholesterol.

But also in medicine its effectiveness as a diuretic and as a stimulant on the kidneys to expel waste is valued. Parsley is particularly helpful in treating kidney and bladder inflammations, irritable bladder and edema (an observable swelling in certain parts of the body).

And this is from VEGETARIANISM AND VEGETARIAN NUTRITION:

Parsley is loaded with good nutrition. Like most green vegetables, parsley is a good source of vitamin K, vitamin A, folic acid, vitamin C, potassium, and fiber. Its flavonoid content is substantial, giving it strong antioxidant activity. It also contains some useful iron.

I had a wonderful smoothie this evening made from 3 ripe bananas, a cup of water, and half a bunch of parsley. The parsley balanced the sweetness of the banana very well (it's amazing how well fruit and greens go together), and I noticed after I finished it, the parsley had a bite to it. I'm excited to have it again. I really look forward to the next green smoothie.

Today is Day 5 going 100% raw, and I had a green smoothie with organic collards this morning, a pound of organic strawberries for lunch, my parsley smoothie, and for dinner, almost double the amount of salad that I had the night before. It was so good with the dulse and avocado dressing I couldn't help overeating. But I felt very heavy afterwards, and went and took a 2 hour nap. I guess I have to keep learning little lessons like that to stay on track.

One thing I've noticed with going 100% raw is that you have to always be looking ahead. You can't look back ever to the way you used to eat, the old addictive relationship with food. As long as I'm always looking ahead to the next meal, what I might make tomorrow, what new thing I'd like to try, or new dish to make, I'm fine. Variety is very important.

My daugher reminded me of this raw dish I used to make - stuffed red bell peppers. That's what I'm looking forward to next. I soaked sunflower seeds, then blended them with one bunch of herbs (usually a mint), lemon juice, onion, and Real Salt. This mix went into the peppers - it was very good.

Ebbing's Silverberry (eleagnus ebbingei)

2009-02-26T18:40:00.010-05:00

The silverberries are getting ripe! There's one hedge along a south-facing wall where most of the berries have turned a speckled strawberry-red.

This shrub is everywhere in the Atlanta area. It's unmistakable in that it's a shrub with evergreen leaves that have a ragged edge - and the fruit, leaves and stems are speckled with silver. The undersides of the leaves are speckled with a rusty brown.

I've found it trimmed into bushes and hedges around apartment complexes, along the bottomland forest of the Chattahoochee River, and just today saw it outside my father's factory . . . short bushes with new rust-brown shoots spreading in a long arc beyond the bush - eventually they will be trimmed. When it's not trimmed it's like a sprawling mass of shoots sometimes over 12 feet high - it can form a thicket and engulf young trees.

As far as edibility, the ripest silverberries are a thin layer of edible flesh, very acid yet sweet, around a long ridged seed. Those still not quite ripe have some astringency - though nothing like the astringency of the related autumn olive (eleagnus umbellata).

Many permaculture sites rave about the Ebbing's Silverberry - it's a nitrogen-fixer, great nesting and windbreak hedge, and has berries ripe in early spring.

It is great there are berries this time of year - typically late winter/early spring is the leanest time for foraging. However the berries are nothing like the unbelievably good and unbelievably profuse berries of autumn olive (common weed tree throughout the east). The flesh of the Ebbing's silverberry is thin, acid, and covers a large seed. It is slightly possible that the berries are not fully ripe yet. But considering the size of the seed, and that I've found some with no astringency (usually the sign of a ripe eleagnus berry), I'm doubtful. But either way it's a great food source, and I'm sure loaded with nutrients.

I have finally got my green smoothies down, now that I'm on Day 4 of going 100% raw. Look at this beauty:

Incredibly, incredibly satisfying. This is made from 1 cup of filtered water, 2 ripe bananas, a ripe mango, and organic collard greens. The secret I realized was in blending the mix on high for an additional 30 seconds, until every last trace of leaf bit is blended in. I was always worried about getting the mix too hot from blending, but this 30 seconds on high hardly heats it up at all. In fact it all remained cooler than room temperature as the water was cold.

I had a green smoothie with kale this morning (felt a little nauseous chewing all the unblended leaf bits). For lunch I ate 2 pounds of strawberries that I found on sale. After my 2nd green smoothie that you see above, I made a delicious salad:

I probably wasn't all that hungry for it, but I know I've got to spoil myself somehow or the diet will feel too strict. It's romaine lettuce, a tomato, dulse, some chopped red onion, and a dressing made by blending 1 avocado with the juice from 2 tangerines. The dressing was very creamy and interesting. Next time I will try lemon or lime instead of orange, so it's not quite so sweet.

On the walk back from eating silverberries I spotted our local weed cress (cardamine spp.) now in flower:

The leaves are somewhat stronger, but for a mustard, pretty mild. I might try a smoothie with a handful or two of cress. I'll at least gather it for my next salad.

I'm going to try a raw diet for my dog also, Mishka:

I was planning on starting today, but I'll wait a few more days until I'm more stable myself.

He's a 65 pound white shepherd. I've got him on BilJak now (a fresh frozen dog food). I'm hoping by giving him real meat with bones that not only will he be healthier, and happier, but learn what real food is like. That way when we're up homesteading in Tennessee, maybe he'll actually try eating all the mice and moles and birds he catches, instead of just throwing them around as toys until they rot.
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Kennesaw Mountain

2009-02-25T18:49:00.006-05:00

We took a trip to the base of Kennesaw Mountain today to look for wild edibles. But we've had a lot of cold this winter, and Kennesaw is far behind where it usually is this time of year. There's not much growing - though the honeysuckle is flowering. The cream flowers smell intensely sweet, with a lot of nectar - but the base of the flowers is harsh, sort of like daylily. There's a farm across the street from the trailhead, and the girls fed the goats and lama and pony a bag of carrots.

Today is Day 3 of going 100% raw. I had a green smoothie with kale this morning. My daughters and I split a 10 pound durian for lunch. I had another green smoothie later (with collards - excellent). I felt great from all this. I'd been soaking sesame seeds all day for tahini. I drained and rinsed them, and tried blending them up with the juice of one lemon. Didn't work - gritty. I finally got out my little hand-held grinder to do the job:

I ran the seeds through twice to get them into mush. I added a little Real Salt. I ate this for a while with celery, then remembered we have some small seedy tangerines in the fridge. I juiced 4 of these and put it in the blender with my tahini mush. This had a great flavor, though not the usual tahini consistency - it was more wet. But afterwards my stomach hurt and I felt like I ate way too much.

The secret of going raw is to never go hungry, but also, to never eat too much. I thought by first soaking the seeds they would be more digestible - we'll see.

Dandelions and Roadside Pollution

2009-02-25T01:04:00.002-05:00

. Today is my second day eating 100% raw and I gathered dandelion flowers for my green smoothie. I picked about 40 to 50 of them. You just pluck the flower and pinch off the green base, so that there is no white sap left on the flower (the sap is very bitter). It's important to do this before they go in the bag, or sap leaking out of the green stems will get on the flowers and make them bitter. Process them on the spot, then place them in your gathering bag or basket.

For the smoothie I used 2 bananas, 1 mango, 1 cup of water, and the flowers. It was excellent. Sweet and rich (dandelion flowers are sweet), with a great texture. I felt so balanced after this meal I didn't eat anything else the rest of the evening - even though there was a tempting durian in the fridge.

Though 'going raw' is psychologically brutal in the beginning (especially the first 2 weeks - like breaking free of any other addiction), I feel like I'm doing okay and stable. Making sure I focus on greens and minerals more than anything else (rather than sugars and fats) has balanced me very well.

There are inevitably moments of course where you pity yourself, and dwell on things you can't have anymore. But you can't have it all in life. No you can't have those big comforting meals anymore that you lived your whole life around, going from meal to meal. But for giving it up you get perfect health, a perfect body, and happiness. I think it's a good trade.

Most of the weeds nearby are roadside weeds, so I thought I should fully research the effects of auto emissions on roadside plants, before I make them a staple in my diet. The facts are not good. Not only are there gaseous emissions in exhaust, there is also particulate matter that comes out the tailpipe, as well as off the tires. The particulate matter is things like heavy metals, as well as other pollutants.

But edible weeds often thrive by the side of the road. Look at this patch of henbit, with its understory of chickweed:

There are varying levels of pollutant exposure for roadside plants. One factor is whether the plant is perrenial or annual. Perrenials get it the worst, because they're there year after year, soaking it up. Another factor is whether the soil is downhill or uphill from the road. If it's downhill contaminants from the road wash into it over and over, and are absorbed in the roots. Typically it is flowers and fruits that are the least affected, especially flowers considering how short-lived they are. And in general the poisons in the roots don't migrate up into the flowers and fruits. The leaves are so-so. They often get quite a bit of particulate matter dumped on them. Washing them in water tends to only remove 1/3 of the pollution.

The biggest factors are how much use the road gets - something with only a car an hour, upslope from the road . . . these plants are probably fine. A closed road would be best. But a road with heavy traffic - the plants are probably affected badly. But the particulate matter tends to only cover the immediate roadside. The level of pollution drops rapidly as you move away from the road.

The dandelion flowers I gathered were uphill from a busy road. The flowers are extremely short-lived, so not exposed to pollution for very long. Hopefully I can find some nearby (walking distance) sources for wild food that are far from roads.
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Dead-Nettle (lamium purpureum)

2009-02-23T18:23:00.001-05:00

. Purple dead-nettle (lamium purpureum) is an extremely common lawn and roadside weed. It will carpet huge areas, and grow to be quite lush in fertile soil. It's a short-lived annual that will grow and flower even in the winter with mild temperatures. It's in the mint family, so it's a very mild mint - look closely at the stem and you can see it's square, or 4-sided, instead of round or cylindrical:

Sometimes mint stems can be so hairy the best way to tell the stem is square is to feel it with your fingers. You'll feel the edges.

The entire plant is edible. The flavor is very mild, grassy - you can eat it stem and all, or pluck off the leafy tops. The leaves are covered in a dense hairy down - and this can take away some from the mild flavor. However you get used to it quickly.

Dead-nettle's reported to be highly nutritious, abundant in iron, vitamins, and fiber. The oil in the seeds is high in antioxidants. And the bruised leaves can be applied to external cuts and wounds to stop bleeding and aid in healing.

One great way to eat large quantities of this plant is to blend it into a smoothie. I'm a firm believer after many years of foraging that greens are the most important part of our diet. But instead of grazing and chewing all day (though chewing is important!), we can mimic an indigenous diet by blending up large amounts of greens and edible weeds into smoothies - the miracle tonic called the 'green smoothie'.

The dead-nettle is now in flower and my daughters and I go to gather a few cups of it for our smoothie:

I use the entire above-ground portion of the plant, and collect it in one of our small muscadine baskets:

When we were raw fooders camped in a small pine needle clearing in Apalachicola NF (northern Florida) - we spent a month working on crafts and primitive skills. Muscadine vines were everywhere (it's a tough southern grape). We made several baskets - they're incredibly durable:
It's tough to gather a lot of the dead-nettle because of a very cold wind ripping by. Though it's almost March, it still feels like winter. On the walk back home, once I've gathered enough, we all chew and eat some of the dead-nettle. For me this is the best way to fully appreciate how nourishing this plant is - and it's a great exercise for your teeth and jaws.

I lay out my ingredients for the smoothie at home; the dead-nettle, a banana, a mango, and 2 cups of water:

I put everything into a new Cuisinart blender I just picked up ($99 - but it puts out 600 watts, over 3/4 horsepower). Water first, then fruit, then greens:

The finished product was rather watery and not too sweet and slightly gritty from imperfectly blended dead-nettle. So I peeled 6 baby bananas and threw them in. This did the trick. Sweet, rich, a smoothie-like consistency, and with all those weeds, unbelievably mineral-dense and nutritious.

Today is my first day of going back onto raw foods and being a 100% raw vegan again. I'm going to use an abundance of wild edible plants and green smoothies in my diet, and document the process here.

I want to feel again like I did several years ago - when the whole family was 100% raw, camping up on Black Balsam in western North Carolina, gathering huge amounts of wild blueberries, and blackberries, and cherries, and juneberries, and foraging on our hands and knees to collect trailside plantain for our salads. It's only a matter of discipline.
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Laurelcherry [prunus caroliniana]

2009-02-11T16:29:00.002-05:00

Laurelcherry is a small evergreen tree native to the Southeast. It's in the rose family, and related to all other cherries, plums, apples, etc. The cherries remain on the tree often until spring. Because of its smooth bark, evergreen foliage, and winter fruit - at first it looks like a holly with black berries. But it is a cherry.

The fruit is essentially a thin edible rind over a large green seed. It is strong, bitter and unripe up into the winter - like all wild cherries, bitter until soft. Since the flesh is so thin, it shrivels rather than softens - but the softening is when most of the bitterness goes away - it's still strong though, with an intense cherry liquor flavor. You're really almost eating just the skin of the cherry.

To be certain a cherry's a cherry I always eat a leaf. It's bitter usually the first 5 to 8 seconds, then an unmistakable cherry flavor hits - and there's no question. The leaves have a trace of cyanide (hydrocyanic acid), and so do the pits . . . it's interesting that Native Americans used to pound whole cherries including the pits into a mash and dry into cakes. So our understanding of hydrocyanic acid might need reevaluated.

Many sites refer to the fruit of the laurelcherry as either poisonous or inedible. But here's a report put out by the Forest Service. They refer to the fruit as "suited for human consumption".