Young dandelion leaves are a mildly bitter addition to my bowl (best picked before the flowers emerge), the sort of taste that radicchio or endive provides.
Violets are coming up now. The purple and white flowers are attractive and tasty, and weirdly interesting when you serve them to your friends, who wonder if you've lost your mind putting flowers in with the lettuce. The leaves are good, too, in moderation.
Wild onions are ubiquitous, but their taste is breath destroying; the chives and Egyptian onions that I planted are milder alliums.
I also get mache or corn salad resprouting from seeds I sprinkled about.
I love this time of year. It's the first time I can hunt and harvest food not in a grocery store. I feel my taste buds waking up with the red buds (which are also tasty). This long cold spring is moving on finally. The salad says so.
I tried adding dandelion greens to lentil soup, instead of spinach, which is my usual green of choice. Added a good bit, but can't say that the taste came thru. Possibly should've added it at the last to create a layered effect. But, hey, I had to go out at midnight to harvest it, can't let the neighbors see me foraging for dandelions, I mean, dandelion greens are po' folk food, people might think I'm an illegal migrant worker, or even a gypsy. If only Walmart would stock dandelion greens in their produce dept, then we could buy it there and feel normal.
ReplyDeleteI betcha Rush Limbaugh wouldn't approve of foraging for dandelions, since it's unAmerican not to support big agribusiness. Maybe it'll be illegal one day, like picking a psillosibin mushroom in your own backyard's illegal. Been there, done that, blame it on the cow.
Until then, I'll be out at midnight foraging. Don't want to ruin the American-as-apple-pie image of my neighborhood.