Edible Weeds Series~Cattails #4

Cattails are found pretty much anywhere in the world where there is full sun and areas of lakes, streams, canals, rivers, and brackish water.

The young tender shoots are edible raw or cooked. The rhizome is often very tough but is a rich source of starch. Pound the rhizome to remove the starch and use as a flour. The pollen is also an exceptional source of starch. When the cattail is immature and still green, you can boil the female portion and eat it like corn on the cob.

Other Uses: The dried leaves are an excellent source of weaving material you can use to make floats and rafts. The cottony seeds make good pillow stuffing and insulation. The fluff makes excellent tinder. Dried cattails are effective insect repellents when burned.



Website here has some different ways to eat...I haven't tried cattail yet, but I will soon!

Edible Weed Series, well, not Weed, but Tree Seed....Sugar Maple Tree Seeds

Sugar Maple Trees

Edible Uses: The seeds when hulled and boiled are edible. In the spring, these trees are tapped for their sap, which is boiled into syrup and sugar. For the seeds you can try so many different flavors using, salt, pepper, crushed pepper, even soaking them in soy sauce, steak seasoning, and frying them in bacon grease (yeah BACON!!!!) for different flavors.

Medicinal Uses: Pure sap may be drank as a spring tonic. Spring sap syrup is also taken as a liver tonic, a kidney cleanser and a cough syrup. Teas of the inner bark are drank for a cough or diarrhea and were thought to be useful as a diuretic, an expectorant and a "blood purifier.

More On Dandelions!!!!

Kids eating Dandilions!

First, I just want to say....please over look the dirty faces, they had been playing outside all evening! Elizabeth likes them, but likes them better with salt! (Funny picture of her)

Rebekah, well she didn't like them!


Lillian was actually the first to try it, surprised me really, she is a picky little thing. She likes them! (you can see why we sometimes call her pig pen, dirty face, lol)

Josh, lol, I don't know if he likes them or not, or just wanted to take a picture! He is silly!

Edible Weed Series #3 Dandelions

Here is a link to a wonderful video about Dandelions (plus, this guy just makes me smile, his name is Doug Elliott)....Sorry, guys, it wouldn't let me embed it on here. But here is the link.....//http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1911416491/bctid1772111697

All parts of the dandelion are edible and have medicinal and culinary uses. It has long been used as a liver tonic and diuretic. Dandelion roots can be harvested during any frost-free period of the year and eaten raw, steamed, or even dried, roasted and ground into a coffee substitute. The flowers are best known for their use in dandelion wine, but they also can be added to a salad, made into jellies or dipped in batter to make dandelion fritters.

The are very nutritious having antioxidant properties and being high in vitamins A, C, Iron and calcium. It is used to treat water retention, indigestion and heartburn. It is said to alleviate postpartum symptoms and other pregnancy issues. In addition, the roots contain a starch like substances that may help balance blood sugar, as well as bitter taraxacin, which stimulates digestion.It is also able to treat the liver, gall bladder, kidney and joint problems. Well known as a blood purifier, it is also reputed to help with eczema, stimulate digestion and work as a mild laxative.

I like this video, but man I want my dandelions to get that big....be on the look out, I have already been finding some of these guys in my yard and I ordered the seeds for them. Oh, one more thing about the video, he shows us how to make a drink, so want to try it!!!! In fact, I can't wait to try it all!!!!

Edible Weed Series #2 Lambs Quarters

Lambs Quarters is also one of my favorites!!! I remember my mom cooking this in our stir fry and with meat....I loved it!!!!

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!

Edible Weed Series #1 Purslane Herb

One of my favorite Edible Weed is called Purslane. Purslane has a mild sweet/sour flavor and it is chewy, but crisp. Most always the stem has a reddish tent and it creeps along the ground. It blooms in the summer with a small yellow flower. The seeds are no larger than a grain of sand and they are black.

Purslane is known as an excellent source of vitamins A, C and E and the essential amino acids. Reports describe Purslane as a “power food of the future” because of its high nutritive and antioxidant properties. Purslane leaves contain Omega-3 fatty acid which regulate the body’s metabolic activities. Purslane herb is known to have one of the highest known concentrations of Omega-3 fatty acid in any plant.

Purslane can be eaten straight off the ground raw or cooked on the stove. We have cooked it with Squash and we love it. It goes great in stir fry, soups and salad.

This is one of my favorite and I hope that you will try it...I have ordered seeds for this years garden (because it has a small root system, it makes great mulch in your garden). This stuff multiply like crazy, but that is a good thing and if it comes up somewhere that you don't want it, pull it up. I read somewhere that these seeds can last 10 years outside, wow...that really does sound like the food of the future. This stuff comes up everywhere. I don't have any in my yard, but I do remember seeing it the State Fair park last year and it grows down at my moms house. Now, they do say that the wilder it is, the better it is. I can't wait to plant my seeds!

Edible Weeds

I am going to do a series on Edible Weeds. I am going to do one at a time and it will probably take me a little while. These plants are all around us and they are really good for us. Now, in this age in time I feel that we need to know all about how to survive off the land if needed. But, besides that, these plants are delicious and so good for you. It is so neat to be able to go out in your back yard, or to take a walk in the woods and find these plants and to take them home and make a salad or cook with them. I love sharing this with my children! So, keep an open mind and forget you are eating what most people call a weed. Maybe we can all get together and have a "weed" eating party!!!!!