Eat Your Weeds @ Rutgers Day: How to Safely Savor Wild Edible Plants

Tomorrow, April 26, 2014 is Rutgers Day in New Brunswick, New Jersey! Every year about 70,000 people come to Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey's New Brunswick campus for a huge festival celebrating all that is our university.

The Struwe lab (i.e. the writers and creators of this blog) will host a public outreach and education table entitled "Eat Your Weeds!: How to Safely Savor Wild Edible Plants." We will provide information about weedy plants, advice on urban foraging, and free samples of some original recipes that incorporate weedy plants to everyone who stops by. It will be a lovely way to celebrate the start of the growing season - and the upcoming end of the semester - here on campus!

Here is some information about my current favorite weedy plant and a recipe for a snack that we'll be serving tomorrow, garlic mustard hummus:

Delicious garlic mustard hummus on cracker (with a hairy cress leaf on top). Photo L. Struwe (cc).

Information about garlic mustard, Alliaria petiolata (Brassicaceae), an invasive species.

Recipe for garlic mustard hummus, developed by Sara Morris-Marano.

You can download our recipe handouts at this link, or under Download in the right navigation bar on this blog. 

Who stole my weeds?

A hilarious news story has been making the rounds recently, about a property owner in Portland, Oregon, who is upset that someone is trespassing and picking the weeds on this property. The story broke on  KATU, a local news station and there are some hilarious comments below it, and then was picked up by Fox News).  The owner is blaming the chefs of neighboring restaurants, and say that not only do they pick the weeds, they leave recipes after them.

To me, this sounds like a April 1 joke (except it wasn't published on the first of April).  First, if you have weeds, wouldn't you be happy to get rid of them?  Second, I doubt chefs would pick weeds in urban lawns that most likely have been sprinkled with pesticides, cat urine, and exhaust fumes plus other unmentionable things.  Third, chefs leaving recipes? This story smells funny all the way from Oregon.  It is possible it is true of course, but that remains to be seen.

Urban foraging for edible plants in Belgium. Would you eat the plants from this spot?
Creative Commons photo by foam on Flickr.

However, the idea that chefs would harvest weeds for serving at upscale restaurants are likely and part of a new trend of eating a larger variety of greens, being 'on the edge' of novelty, and of course, being extremely locavorish.  This was already described in the great book Foraged Flavor by Wong and Leroux, and has its roots not only in traditional Italian cuisine with its wild spring greens but also in many other ethnic cuisines.

I grew up picking wild stinging nettles in early spring, when the shoots were small (but still stung).  You had to were gloves, and our patch was so small that only only got enough for one meal per year (or rather, I think we gave up after that).  You cooked the soup down like spinach soup and all the stinginess was gone after boiling, add some cream or milk, and then served with a hard-boiled egg cut in half that floats like two boats in the green sea.  Yummy, and here is a recipe.  The stinging nettles are certainly weeds. 

Invasive Species Sushi

A Connecticut Sushi chef uses invasive species to re-imagine sushi. Although his dishes showcase invasive aquatic species, his formative experiences were harvesting burdock and lamb's quarters with his mother as a child in New Haven.

How might we re-imagine food using weedy species? Corporate monocultures are arguably as destructive to native habitats as improper fishing practices are in aquatic systems. Many of the cursed weeds of lawns and gardens were once widely considered edible and delicious.

In the comments section of the article, some readers list their own food ideas. Isabel mentions wild mustard greens, purslane, dandelion flowers, kudzu and Japanese knotweed. How do you use weedy plants? Send us your re-imagined weeds salad, tea, or stir-fry recipes!

Some plants have really unusual features.  This edible crop and weed, purslane (Portulaca oleracea), has capsular fruits with a top that 'pops off', so that the seeds are then exposed to weather and wind.  This particular type of capsule is called circumscissile, and for this particular plant is could be that the part that is left below with the seeds functions as a splash cup.  I don't know, but it is not unlikely.  The little black seeds would then splash out of the cup when a raindrop hits the cup, and disperse further than just normal falling down out of the capsule. (Note to myself, research needed!)   

Splash cups are not that common, but also occur in the bird's-nest fungus. While looking up purslane I found out that one plant can produce more than 240 000 seeds per season.  Well, it is good it is edible then.

You can read more about purslane and this photo here. 

Photo credit (c) Arjo Vanderjagt on Flickr

Species: purslane (Portulaca oleracea, Portulacaceae)

Not all weeds are edible or even palatable...

Smokey The Cat tried out some leaves of the yellow foxtail (Setaria, Poaceae), but spat them out.  When it comes to edible plants, it is important to remember that some things that are edible do not really taste good, and that some things that taste good actually are toxic.  So, don't go by the taste only.

[photo by Vilseskogen, Flickr, Creative Commons]

The salad is at your feet

Jane Kramer writes about her foraging adventures in Europe in The New Yorker article The Food at Our Feet.  On the New York Times blog City Room, they have a series in Urban Foraging by Ava Chin, writing about purslane picked from the sidewalks of the city, and much more.

Species: purslane, Portulaca oleracea, Portulaceae

Recent weed-related articles in the media

Jane Kramer writes about her foraging adventures in Europe in The New Yorker article The Food at Our Feet.  On the New York Times blog City Room, they have a series in Urban Foraging by Ava Chin, writing about purslane picked from the sidewalks of the city, and much more.

Ecologists have started to argue scientifically about if alien species are necessarily bad or not. It started with an article in Nature (subscription only, so no link, but find it by googling 'doi:10.1038/474153a') by Mark Davis and 18 other ecologists.  This led to a bumper crop of protest letters from many other ecologists (see the issues afterwards in Nature), and it entered the popular media too.  Here is a podcast from Radio Australia about it. 

In an article in TIME magazine, Bryan Walsh ponders if 'In a Globalized World, Are Invasive Species a Thing of the Past?'

Wired adds to the pile, with 'Sometimes Invasive Species are Good'. Wired goes on to describe 9 invasive species worth admiring, including the dandelion weed.

Weed soda?

Yes, in England.  Fentiman's produces a soda made with dandelion leaves (Taraxacum) and burdock roots (Arctium). It is apparently a traditional English favorite.  I will have to ask my UK friends about this.

They also have Ginger Beer that includes yarrow (Achillea) and their Orange Soda has speedwell (Veronica) in it.  Gloriously weedy, indeed.

No more foraging in NYC parks

An article in today's New York Times describes how the park department is planning to crack down on foraging for edible plants (and animals) in the city's parks.

"....New Yorkers are increasingly fanning out across the city’s parks to hunt and gather edible wild plants, like mushrooms, American ginger and elderberries. Now parks officials want them to stop. New York’s public lands are not a communal pantry, they say." (source)

Not all are weeds of course, but many are, and some are also invasive. Personally I think a total ban is wrong, because I want kids to pick a raspberry, and if the Chinese want to gather the smelly ginkgo fruits, let them!  And if the "edible weeds crowd" want to reduce the invasive Japanese knotweed by cutting the young edible spring shoots, that is certainly better than spraying with pesticides later. But hauling turtles out of the park is a different thing.  So as usual, the issue is not as straightforward or black and white as we would like it to be.  It always amazes me that it is illegal to pick mushrooms in America's National Parks for example. Is it better that the mushrooms rot away?  I think it is better that people get closer to nature understand its value, limitations and dangers than that we coop up nature behind laws and bars and signs that tells us to stay away from all green things.