new goal: learning to "eat my yard"

[TeaChick]

i don't know how to use them as a thickener yet, i need to look into it some more, but yeah, in place of cornstarch or flour. apparently it is a traditional thickener in a lot of oriental cooking, from before corn and wheat were introduced to that part of the world.

Sounds good. Please let us know. I'm trying to avoid GMO stuff (corn is one of the top three worst).

 

[krcote]

Just read your thread. I've got purslane in my garden up to my eyeballs. Never knew it could be useful! I would like to try it sauteed like spinach. I'll report back!

 

[Amastacia]

i haven't tried the purslane yet, but i really should. i'm hoping this weekend to make a pie with the wild sweet cherries i have, maybe collect more mulberries and do something with them, and make daylily petal jelly (i randomly found a recipe online and now am curious). i will let you know what i manage to get done and what is actually worth doing.

first step, get some pie crust. not going to bother making it yet, too many other things to try first.

 

[Luckyduck2]

Some common "weeds" that are edible and grow in gardens and flower beads:

Lambsquarters
English Plantain
Dandelion
Garden Sorrel (most people just call these clovers)
Thistles
Prickly Lettuce

You can also eat the flowers of the Daylily, petals are preferable. I see you already have purslane. We are big non-gmo people too, we make most of our food supply ourselves.

 

[Amastacia]

tried cooked lambsquarter last night, cooked it like spinach (i think, i've never actually cooked spinach before) with a lot of butter. it was pretty good, but i could probably use less butter next time.

with the daylilies, the buds are great in stir fries (did that again last night) and apparently the tubers are edible too, but i haven't tried them yet.

it is kind of odd, i'm not really opposed to GMO, at least not all of them. the ones with things like pesticides built in scare me a bit, but then again i'm much more opposed to pesticides than GMOs, so those are pretty much the worst of both. i'm trying to produce/collect my own food for a few reasons. one, it is cheaper, especially since i work about half time and can spend the rest in the yard. i can limit the chemicals we're exposed to. i can limit how much i have to support importing stuff from countries where i have issues with their practices (Mexico uses chemicals that are banned in the US, though we still make them). and i can increase the variety of foods we eat. this country has become far too dependent on a few food sources, and that will come back to bite us when a blight of some form comes through and wipes out the corn crop for a year.

while i'm not against GMO, i do have serious issues with Monsanto. but that is a different issue (sort of)

 

[Luckyduck2]

I like to hike so I usually just grab and eat any edibles that I find. Yes, the tubers of the daylily are edible, but I have never tried them before. Just cook them like baked potatoes I guess. There are some that I forgot to add to my little list that you may find in your yard, like Sheep Sorrel and cress. There are plenty of edibles to find in other places in your yard. Do you have a pond with some vegetation growing around it or maybe a forested area. Wee completely opposed to both GMO's and pesticides, it just isn't natural to have human DNA in corn or frog DNA in corn. GMO corn wouldn't stand a chance in a huge blight. And spraying the corn with the same pesticide over and over again is just going to make the blight resistant to the pesticide. Heirloom vegetable plants wouldn't actually have a chance of becoming resistant to the blight. I agree that America needs to find a more dependable food source. Did you know that 80% of the food products found in the U.S. are banned in other countries?

 

[erinszoo]

Has anyone mentioned plantain yet? I can't imagine you don't have it somewhere. It grows all over. Young leaves are eaten in salad, older leaves cooked. Flower stems crushed can help stop bruising supposedly.

I have huge banks of daylilies. Didn't know they were edible. I'll have to look up recipes.

 

[Czech's_chicks]

Unfortunately, not much of what I grow even makes it to the table. I guess I'm a veggie hoarder, I eat while I'm out there working. My family will get some plums. I froze the whole lot to make jam. Just waiting for the passion fruit to ripen because my brain seems to think that would be a good flavor combination.

 

[Luckyduck2]

I've mentioned plantains above, I've only tried them raw so far. (Maybe because I'm too lazy to get up and make my own food, since my mom doesn't want to cook stuff like that.) You can also make flour out of plantain seeds. I have tried dandelion tea (made with only the root) before and it does taste a little like coffee, although it's quite strong. You can find the tea at some health food stores. The only two edible mushroom that I know are King Bolettes and Morrels. Some other useful but not edible plants that you may be able to find are Lovage, Horsetails, Yarrow (white has the most potent medicinal properties), Jewelweed or Touch-me-not (orange variety is most potent), and Comfrey. I'll probably think of some more later but I am tired from staying up until 2, so I'm not thinking straight. Out of anyone who has some kind of meadow/ forest on their property, can you tell me some of the kind of plants/ trees that grow their? If it is forest, is it lowland or upland? I may be able to tell you what some edibles that may grow their are.

 

[Amastacia]

well, i made daylily petal jelly this weekend. think i need to redo it, though. it isn't setting. of course, i did realize that the recipe i found for it wasn't really complete. there were no real directions, just how to get the juice, not to actually make the jelly.

i will probably try to remake it today, and i want to go out and pick mulberries and cherries too. the cherries are over ripe by now, but with any luck will still work for pies and jellies.