Why Eat Wild Herbs and Edible Plants? What Do You Get In a Weed That Money Can Not Buy?
For hundreds of years people took advantage of the medicine cabinet at their doorstep. Before the advent of processed foods and modern convenience stores, wild plants were a common dietary supplement. They were the ultimate natural multivitamin!
Often the plants we call weeds have therapeutic value. Our pharmaceutical industry bases many new medicines on the healing factors in herbs.
Why eat wild herbs?
They are power packed with phyto-nutrients, hundreds of times the vitamin and mineral density of a supermarket lettuce. Remember our common lettuce started out in the wild. Due to thousands of years of agriculture it has become rather meek and mild, compared to its ancestors.
They are free; great value nutrition.
You only need a little to reap the nutritional benefits.
Nutrient dense wild plants support all levels of health, starting at a cellular level.
What if you live in the city?
Not everyone lives in the countryside these days, with healthy spray free wild herbs at their doorstep. How can you get the benefits of wild plants without turning into a forager?
Drink herbal teas made from wild herbs, like nettle.
Eat darker leafy green vegetables whenever possible. Shop at a farmers market for the older varieties and more unusual green vegetables. These vegetables are most likely less hybridised and therefore intrinsically more powerful health wise.
Take a green powder like barley grass or Vitamineral Green. Vitamineral green contains wild plants in its nutrient dense ingredient profile.
If you do live rurally, how do you spot the good ones?
People ask us, “how do you avoid the poisonous ones?” Good question! Ask around and learn one edible variety at a time. Often community gardens have people in the know. Gather this precious knowledge slowly. Read books. You will feel more connected to your local environment and
What to do with wild herbs and dark leafy greens?
Wild herbs can be juiced (the forerunner to wheat grass juice!) with carrots and apples, made into dressings or pesto, and chopped finely into salads.
Wild Weed Pesto Recipe - This really tastes good!
Makes 2 cups
This recipe works well for many other greens if you are unfamiliar with edible weeds. Try rocket, coriander or spinach. It can also be spiced up with the addition of fresh chilli. Almost any other nuts or seeds can be substituted for the pumpkin seeds.
2 cups (packed) chickweed, puha or other mild-tasting edible weeds
1 cup pumpkin seeds, soaked overnight in water, then drained.
3 cloves garlic, chopped
4 Tab olive oil
2 Tab miso (or ½ tsp sea salt)
Juice of one lemon
1) Wash your weeds and drain well. Chop them into about 1 cm bits.
2) Place in a food processor. Blend together with all other ingredients. Adjust consistency with either olive oil (to make it thicker) or water (to make it thinner).
Conclusion on Eating Wild Weeds
So what are you going to get out of a common weed, that you won’t get out of spinach? Not less, you get more of everything! More vitamins and minerals, to feed the powerhouse in every cell exactly what it’s needs to be well. As nutrient values in common vegetables have declined, eating a few finely chopped wild herbs in your salad will top you up… for free!
Copyright Wild Health and Anna Wilde 2007
Anna Wilde works with people who want to improve their health naturally.
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Friday, December 11, 2009
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SOURDOUGH STARTER with WILD YEAST
Wild yeasts exist in the air around you and to some extent on the wheat berries. There are wild yeasts on grapes (unsulphured) and apples and other fruits. It is those wild yeasts which are 'captured' to make a sourdough starter. The process takes from 3 to 5 days. I wish I had specific amounts for you, but you could start with 1/4 to 1/2 cup of flour and mix in enough warm (not hot) water to make a thin paste. DO NOT make it too soupy. That, in fact, is the trick to a good starter, according to the French bread makers, and I think they should know. And after you've fooled around with the flour and water thing, you might wish to branch out into adding those unsulphured grapes, apples, sour milk, etc as a catalyst in order to capture other strains of yeast. Each of these strains has a slightly different taste. In fact if you move to another area, you might end up with a starter that produces an entirely different flavor. For instance, San Francisco sourdough bread is well known and has a distinct taste due to the wild strains in the air there. On day one you mix the flour and water (and add any catalysts to encourage fermentation) and place in a warm spot. After 3 days, the dough should be moist, inflated, and slightly sour. More flour and water is added (mixed in) and left to sit in a warm spot. After 2 days the process is repeated. Then the next day it is done again. Note the order: 3 days, 2 days, 1 day. At this point you should be able to make a loaf of bread using part of the starter and adding back what you took out in the form of more flour and water. Rule of thumb: Use about 10% starter to size of loaf. In the case of a 2 lb loaf this is a bit over 3 oz of starter (3.2 to be exact). For a 1 lb loaf 1.5 oz would be used. A book that describes this process in great detail is The Village Baker by Joe Ortiz, copyright 1993, published by Ten Speed Press, Berkley CA. If it's not still in print, try the used books stores, that's where I got mine. Or try your local library. If they don't have it, they might be able to get it for you. ©2008 by Ernestina Parziale
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