There are many, many plants growing locally that can supplement your meals and be added nutrition as well as saving you money on your food costs. It's fun and safe to do this if you follow a couple of guidelines: 1) Gather only plants you are 100% certain are edible, 2) Gather in areas that are wild and therefore less likely to be exposed to chemicals.
My grandmother taught me alot about wild food and how to identify edible plants as I was growing up and I want to share one plant in particular with you and how to serve it. This one is a southern staple, Poke Salit or Poke Salad, however you choose to say it, it's some good stuff. It tastes like peppery spinach but the cooking technique is different, you have to parboil it once (twice if the leaves are bigger than 5" long). It grows almost anywhere there's alot of sun, especially along fence rows. There's even a song about it - click on the link to listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCSsVvlj6YA&feature=email
Now, back to Poke. First you need to know what it looks like. The leaves are smooth and oval, growing on sturdy stalks and the flowers are tiny and white and grow in clusters. The leaves can be picked any time during the growing season as long as you pick the young ones. When the inedible fruit forms it's blueberry-shaped in the same cluster form. I repeat, the fruit is inedible, Some say it's poisonous, but I have seen no proof of that, I just know it's extremely bitter and will ruin your clothes if you get the juice on you. Here's a photo of a Poke plant:
The smaller leaves are what you want to pick because they take less time to prep for consumption. The best leaf size is between 2" & 5":
You'll need to pick alot , Poke is like spinach, it cooks down to a fraction of what you started with. To have enough cooked Poke to serve 4-6 you'll need to pick a big grocery bag full of the leaves. When you get home with your Poke, put a large kettle of water on to boil while you wash and inspect the leaves for grass and such, pick all the non-Poke out and when the water starts boiling add all the poke to the kettle and boil for 1 minute, drain water and refill with clean, cold tap water to rinse leaves well. This parboiling step makes sure there's no bitterness. Drain leaves and you're ready to cook them. I use a smaller Dutch Oven for the next part:
Poke Salad with Bacon
3 Slices bacon, cooked crisp and crumbled, reserve fat
Parboiled Poke leaves
Salt to taste
Put Poke in Dutch Oven and add enough water to cover the poke leaves 1/3 way up, add bacon fat and salt to taste. Cook 5-7 mins or until leaves are tender (think spinach here). Top with crumbled bacon and serve with cornbread and green onions.
***Just a note, very young poke leaves (less than 2") are a good diuretic, so unless you are looking for that bonus effect, stick with the larger leaves.
If you aren't sure which plants are edible, get a book such as:
*Nature's Garden: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants by Samuel Thayer
*The Wild Table: Seasonal Foraged Food and Recipes by Connie Green and Sarah Scott
...Or check out these websites (hey, it's free!):
http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/tracer-bullets/edibleplantstb.html
http://www.foragingtexas.com/
http://wildfoodplants.com
Happy Free Foraging...more to come!
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