Food for thought! Hopefully the following article about cooking
your meals with wild plants for extra flavors will inspire you enough to leave a
comment about some of the wild plants you might be using in your recipes.

Eating Wild Plants

There are a number of reasons you might want to use wild plants
as food.

Wild plants have some unique flavors that can be among your
enjoyed favorites. Watercress with something sweet such as pancake syrup in a
peanut butter sandwich is one I particularly enjoy. Dandelion greens pesto mixed
with spaghetti sauce are another.

Since the taste of many wild edible plants is so different from
the usual cultivated vegetables, you likely will at first not accept some of
them as a delicious flavorful food. Just about any food flavor other than sweet,
salty, starchy, and fat are, I suppose, acquired tastes. It takes time for your
mind to recognize an unfamiliar flavor as a ‘tried and true’ favorite. Introduce
a wild food into your diet by eating a small amount when you are most hungry.
Repeatedly doing so can make the new food one that you especially enjoy.

The amount of vitamins, minerals and other nutrients in wild
food, according to many sources, is on the average greater in wild foods.
Domesticated vegetables have been selectively bred for looks, production
quantity, taste, length of storage and other qualities other than nutrition.

The fruits and vegetables sold in the supermarket have been
chemically fertilized; exposed to herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, and a
variety of other chemicals; and they may have been genetically modified and/or
irradiated. The safety of eating such produce is of concern to many people. Wild
foods for the most part, avoid those concerns. If you do gather wild foods avoid
taking them from along roadsides, lawns that have been treated with chemicals or
any other areas that may have been treated.

There is the possibility that supermarket food can be
contaminated with pathogens. Dozens of diseases can be spread by an infected
person handling food anywhere from the time it is harvested until it is put into
your grocery bag. Plants growing in the wild are untouched by human hands.

Wild plants can be prepared in many ways. Greens can be put
through a food processor or blender to make pesto. Add just enough oil and/or
water to let the mixture process well. The pesto can then be easily mixed with
other ingredients such as peanut butter, tomato sauce, or syrup for flavoring.
Some greens such as lambs quarters, chickweed and purslane can be used anyway
spinach is prepared. Strong or bitter tasting greens can be boiled changing the
water once or twice to reduce bitterness. This is sometimes done with dandelion
leaves. Then other ingredients can be added for flavoring and texture.

Wild fruit can simply be mixed with nuts or seeds such as
sunflower seeds or almonds.

Some plants such as cattail tuber shoots and burdock root can
be boiled to increase tenderness or to reduce strong flavors and then simply
eaten as is.

Be sure of what it is that you are going to eat and be sure
that it is edible. Consult a good reference book. If possible have someone who
is familiar with a particular plant point it out to you. Most photographs are
not of high enough quality to be relied upon to positively identify a wild
plant.

Some edible plants have poisonous look-alikes. Some plants have
edible parts and have poisonous parts. Some plant parts are edible only after
being prepared in a particular way. It is common that a small quantity of a
plant can be eaten without problems but if you eat too much your digestive
system will protest forcefully.

There’s about 6 or 8 disaster scenarios that I can think of
that seem likely to happen at some time. Most of them seem unlikely to happen in
my lifetime. But you never know. Isn’t it prudent to be prepared, at least to
some extent, in the event the normal food supply is interrupted? Examples of
disasters that seem likely to happen are an asteroid hitting the earth, a
massive nuclear war, a global epidemic, and the failure of one or two major
crops such as corn and wheat due to a widespread disease or climate change.

The gathering of wild foods is interesting and enjoyable.
Foraging for a favorite or new addition to your menu may take you through woods,
through open fields and meadows and other places of beauty. It is a great way to
get out into the natural world and enjoy its complexity and majesty. It adds to
the perception that the world is a good place that is to be enjoyed. It is
emotionally pleasing to find something that seems free and of exceptional value.

Making use of natural foods gives you greater awareness of the
inter-relatedness of living things to each other and to the environment. That
greater awareness helps us more appreciate the weather and climate, the
abundance of nature, agriculture and the food supply, and the importance of
protecting those things.

If you are interested in a few detailed recipes and a couple of
other general preparation methods see www.bobcatswilderkitchen.com

For more information on wild edible plants and recipes see
Foraging the Edible Wild community.webtv.net/Taimloyd/FORAGINGTHEEDIBLE

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