Wild Spring Plant Foods: The Foxfire Americana Library (7) (7 page)

“It’s a right tasty little weed,” said Delia Williams. “It will remind you of mustard quite a bit.”

Greens: pick leaves. Cut up in bite-size pieces and wash thoroughly. Place in bowl, pour hot grease over them, salt and serve. A quart basket of leaves will make two or three servings. If desired, pour a little vinegar over them. Or cut up the leaves and put bacon gravy over them and salt.

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LLUSTRATION 29
Lawton Brooks with brook lettuce.

Brook lettuce is found in very wet seepage slopes, springheads, on rocks in streams or on stream banks. It has four-to-six-inch dark green, succulent leaves that are irregularly scalloped on the edges and slightly fuzzy. Young leaves are used in salads.

Myrtle Lamb told us, “It is kind of a long-leaf thing, and grows in the wettest damp places, where moss grows. As it gets older, it gets a red cast to it.”

Mrs. Norton said, “It’s kind of sticky when its gets old, so you have to get it when it’s real young.”

Salad: Myrtle Lamb likes to take brook lettuce and cut it like tame lettuce, and put onions in it, and hot grease on it. Then sprinkle salt and pepper over it. Or just pour hot grease over it so that it wilts. It can be eaten like wild mustard or turkey mustard.

The blue violet is common in meadows, lawns, and damp, open woodlands. It grows to eight inches tall, with heart-shaped, deep green leaves, and long-stemmed, deep blue flowers. There is a cream-colored form, and the common form with blue and white flowers, called “confederate violet” and naturalized around many home and farm sites.

Violet leaves and flowers are both edible. The blue wood violet
(Viola cucullata)
is very similar, with darker blue flowers, and found in rich woodlands and wet places along streams. Leaves and flowers of
both species can be used in any recipes. Leaves are very rich in vitamins A and C. Many people mentioned mixing them in with other greens such as wild mustards, creases, or lamb’s quarters. Leaves and flowers are also used in tea, and in a medicine supposed to induce sleep, and to “comfort and strengthen the heart.”

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LLUSTRATION 30
Blue violet

Violet flowers have long been used in fancy confections, candied or sugared. In the last century, a gift of candied violets was a “message of love.”

Greens: wash and cut up leaves of blue violets. Cook with a little water twelve minutes. Serve butter over them, or cook with bacon or fatback. Or mix violet leaves with dandelion greens or milkweed shoots and top with bacon and chopped-up hard-boiled eggs. Or mix with lamb’s quarters or pokeweed and cook as above.

Violet salad: add chopped violets to other spring greens for salad, or use alone with vinegar and bacon.

Violet jelly: cook violet flowers with boiling water. Strain, add sugar, pectin, and juice of half a lemon. Simmer until it jells.
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Sugared violets: cook two cups sugar, one-half cup water, a dash of cream of tartar. Stir until sugar grains. Dip fresh violet blossoms (free from stems) and place on platter to dry.

Violet syrup: cover violet blossoms with water. Let stand two days. Strain. Cook with honey and juice of lemon. Stir well. Bring to boil. Put in jars and seal. Good for colds or coughs.

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LLUSTRATION 31
Milkweed

Milkweed is a stout perennial, growing in colonies, to five feet tall. It has large, oval, opposite leaves, and stems and leaves exude a milky juice. It is found in dry fields and on roadsides. Rough pods contain silky-winged seeds. Young shoots are edible when very young, before leaves unfold. Young pods can be used as a substitute for okra, and flowers are cooked into sugar.

In Tennessee and Kentucky, milkweed is considered a tonic, greens “good for what ails you.”

Fried milkweed: cut shoots in small pieces, boil fifteen minutes in salted water. Drain. Fry in small amount of fat. Add in eggs, salt and pepper, and cheese, if desired.

Milkweed soup: shoots—gather shoots while young and tender. Do not gather after July. Wash, cook, drain. Add more water, rice, bacon drippings, salt, pepper, or wild onions. Cook over a slow fire until done. Pods—boil a hambone, add young milkweed pods cut in small pieces, several wild onions or ramps, and a handful of rice. Cook slowly. Add salt and pepper before serving.

Cut milkweed shoots in small pieces. Drain. Serve on toast, topped with hard-boiled egg and bread crumbs. Add onion, if desired. Or add bacon or fatback; or top with cheese sauce.

Milkweed greens: cook one pound very young stalks in water with salt and butter, covered for ten minutes. Drain. Add more butter and chopped wild onions.

A common, naturalized plant, found everywhere along paths and in waste places. Stems are square with green leaves, and spikes of purplish flowers. Mrs. Ethel Corn said, “It looks sort of like rabbit plantain, only the leaves are darker green and bunch up more.” She said to put them in and boil them with a piece of hog meat.

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Ground hog plantain

Mrs. Norton said, “There is a wild ground hog mustard, they call it, and it grows little and low on the ground, and it’s got a round leaf. It has a bloom comes up, it’s a purple flower. But you have to get it real quick, for if you don’t, it’s gone.” When we asked, she said, “How do you fix it? Just cook it with your wild mustard or anything. We always used the sheep sorrel to make it sour like vinegar. Didn’t have much vinegar then, you know, so they used that.”

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LLUSTRATION 33
Broadleaf plantain

Plantain is a very common dooryard weed, a native of Europe, and naturalized in this country. It has large round, basal leaves and a spike of greenish flowers and seeds. The leaves are edible when young, rich in calcium, and make excellent greens, especially when added to mustard.

English plantain, or ribwort
(Plantago lanceolata)
, is known in the mountains as white plantain. Leaves can also be eaten, but leaves of rabbit plantain are preferred.

Plantains are rich in vitamins A and C.

Greens: pick leaves. Pull off stems, parboil fifteen minutes. Drain and rinse. Boil again in fresh water with fat meat until tender. Or fry in a small amount of grease five to ten minutes after boiling and draining. Or, Mrs. Norton suggests, “You take blackberry leaves, wild plantain
leaves, and wild mustard, and cook them together and see what you get.”

Salad: cook plantain leaves, chopped fine, in salt water. Add a pinch of sugar. Mix with other greens in salads. Or, “Cut it up and eat it like lettuce. Pour hot grease on it,” says Mrs. Tom McDowell.

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Corn salad

A common plant of early spring, with opposite, narrow, light green leaves and heads of small white flowers.
Valerianella locusta
is similar, except leaf edges are wavy, and flowers are a very pale blue. Young leaves are edible “used any way you’d use lettuce.”

Valerian tea, a mild sedative, is made by boiling leaves in water. Let them stand twelve hours to draw, then strain and drink sparingly.

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Chicory