Lambs Quarters is also one of my favorites!!! I remember my mom cooking this in our stir fry and with meat....I loved it!!!!
There are so many ways to eat lambs Quarters. You can steam or boil the leaves and stems in water until tender. The greens are fast to cook and turn a dark green in color when cooking. The young leaves and smaller stems can also be eaten raw in salads. Or you can experiment by substituting lambs quarter for spinach or chard in some of your favorite recipes. They say you can dry the leaves and grind them into flour (replaces up to half the flour in any recipe). You can dry the seeds and cook them in soups. Leaves can be eaten raw in salad, or any other way you would use spinach. The flavor is mild, and makes a good addition to soups and other dishes with a lot of flavor, with the intention of adding some extra vitamins and minerals. Seeds can be ground up to make a flour, and boiled into gruel. It has no medicinal value to speak of, but is particularly rich in vitamin C, calcium and vitamin A, not so rich in iron or potassium as spinach is.
The plants can get up to 4 feet high with bunches of branches (full of leaves) forming on a central stem. The leaves can have a white, pollen-looking substance on the bottom of the leaves.
There are so many ways to eat lambs Quarters. You can steam or boil the leaves and stems in water until tender. The greens are fast to cook and turn a dark green in color when cooking. The young leaves and smaller stems can also be eaten raw in salads. Or you can experiment by substituting lambs quarter for spinach or chard in some of your favorite recipes. They say you can dry the leaves and grind them into flour (replaces up to half the flour in any recipe). You can dry the seeds and cook them in soups. Leaves can be eaten raw in salad, or any other way you would use spinach. The flavor is mild, and makes a good addition to soups and other dishes with a lot of flavor, with the intention of adding some extra vitamins and minerals. Seeds can be ground up to make a flour, and boiled into gruel. It has no medicinal value to speak of, but is particularly rich in vitamin C, calcium and vitamin A, not so rich in iron or potassium as spinach is.
When you know what lambs quarters looks like, you will see it everywhere. You may surprised just how much you enjoy the taste of this plant that you previously yanked from the garden and discarded.
Medicinally, Lamb's-quarters is said to have sedative and refrigerant properties, and people have used the poulticed leaves to soothe burns.
Many wild birds eat the seeds, as do chipmunks and squirrels, and the plants provide food for butterflies, as well as for other mammals (aside from human ones). Be sure to leave some for everybody.
I want to add something....hope this sounds right, or rather that I am able to get what I want out the way I want it. For a long, long time now we have ate what we were taught to eat. We have lost so much of what people used to eat because it isn't grown commercially now. God, put these herbs, plants, seeds, and so on here for us to eat....I am happy that I am discovering what (in some ways) what was lost. And, I am discovering new ways to feed my family. Things that are good for us and just plain old good!
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