Wild Greens

Last week the kids and I spent a morning walking and looking for plants. The first edible plants we tasted were fiddle heads. Fiddleheads are unfurled fern fronds. My foraging book says, that no fiddlehead is poisonous, but not all are tasty. (Only eat fiddleheads. Ferns become poisonous once they've unfurled.)

We weren't exactly sure which type of fern we had. We tasted them raw; not so good. Later we fried them up in a little butter. They were much better then, but what isn't better fried in a little butter?

The main food stuff we were looking for was wild greens, or as they are called in Bootstraps and Biscuits; pot herbs. This is my second most used wild food book. It isn't so helpful for identifying, but has great recipes in a down home cooking style. The author shares some fun stories too.

We gathered many types of greens. In our basket were blackberry shoots, clover, dandelion leaves, poke, winter cress, chicory, onion greens and violet leaves. We also gathered the violet flowers, but I have something else in mind for them. More on that later.

I parboiled the blackberry and poke greens. Then chopped and fried about half a pound of bacon, and added an onion and some garlic. The parboiled and other rinsed greens were then added with some water. Looks like a lot in the picture, but after about fifteen minutes of cooking with the lid on there was only about half a pot full. I added a bag of store purchased spinach that I needed to use, put the lid back on and let it cook an additional ten minutes. Salt to taste at this point.

I served the greens with cornbread and boiled potatoes. Talk about a frugal, and in my opinion, tasty meal! To be real here, it wasn't the biggest hit with the family. They enjoyed the cornbread and potatoes. Greens are something they will every now and then. I'd probably hear some complaining if they were served weekly.

Our morning walk, was part exercise, part education, part food finding and all family fun.


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