Last night I ate my first weed salad and obviously, I lived to tell the tale.
My bravery didn’t extend to a full sized bowl, just entrée size, and I took the precaution of texting a photo of the ingredients to a friend with the instruction …
“If I don’t text you back in four hours – call an ambulance”!!
So, first I collected a selection of weeds from the garden, then using my Weed Foragers Handbook I sorted them, only keeping the weeds that I was 99% certain were edible and discarding the rest. I ended up with – farmer’s friend (cobblers pegs), sow thistle, dandelion, chickweed, nasturtium, ribwort (plantain) and a solitary Indian strawberry.
To boost the size of the salad, I added baby rocket, parsley, lime mint, berries & cream mint, common mint, chives and a few clover flowers that I picked whilst en-route to check the letterbox.
Then I added some lightly toasted spiced pine nuts and sunflower seeds and dressed it with an oil, mustard and local organic honey dressing.
Conclusion – individually the weeds tasted a bit “unusual” but the combined salad was really very tasty. The Indian strawberry was a total non-event.
I can’t believe I’m saying this but … I was actually slightly disappointed that I didn’t find more edible weeds. I particularly wanted to find some oxalis* flowers. When we tried them on our herbal exploration day they were like a little burst of sherbet (due to the oxalic acid I assume)
* Note: Oxalis is not a house or garden plant in Australia – it is a pesky weed.
A Bellingen Diary 