Pretty Enough to Eat

Today I was preparing my garlic beds for planting. I brought in two straw bales and the country store where I bought them had bags of apples– 20 lbs for $20! Score! These are locally grown and “minimally sprayed.” That sounds good to me. I’m not sure I want completely unsprayed apples.

I was thinking as I was picking lettuce that I grow enough food not to have to eat the really ugly stuff. Last week I cut into a few large potatoes I harvested weeks ago and they had brown triangles in the middle. Some of them I cut around the “bad centers,” but others I just threw away. I have good potatoes. I was making potato leek soup and didn’t want blemishes or anything off.

A friend recently asked for a recipe for purslane. She got it in her CSA box. I had to call BS on that one. Purslane from your CSA?? I’m sure it has tons of vitamin C or something, but I don’t eat purslane; I pull it as a weed. She ended up making a stew and said that the only thing she didn’t like about the stew was the purslane! It was too chewy and weird tasting. I say if you’re going to offer purslane, put it out as an “extra.” But really, don’t bother washing and prepping purslane for 100 families…

I have tried nettles, making a weird oily soup that I’m sure was very good for me. That was a one-time deal. I also often eat things that are growing up between my garden beds. I love edible flowers, especially nasturtium.

In my homesteading excitement, I even made rabbit stew, twice, from rabbit my husband shot and brought home. Then I told him to just dispose of the rabbit because it really wasn’t worth making the stew for that little bit of meat. Basically, I loved the stew but didn’t think it was worth buying the ingredients and spending the time to accommodate a free rabbit.

When I was preparing the garlic beds, though, I turned over a little square of straw that was lying between the beds and uncovered a thick tangle of really beautiful sprouts. From the seeds attached, I’d say they were from a delicata squash or zucchini that grew in the adjacent garden bed and was discarded.

So can I eat them? Why not? I washed them and cut off the seeds and roots, pulled off some of the tops, and put them on my salad, with lovely lettuces from the cold frame and from a weird patch growing next to the cold frame (I often spill seed packets…). The lettuce that had brown or yellow patches, I threw away. I had a few more tomatoes and some fall radishes, too. The sprouts were good, flavorful, added some depth to the salad. So far, no “digestive” consequences…

My produce is not going to win any beauty contests. Especially my tomatoes! But there is an awful lot of it, so I can be a little picky. And I’ll wait until after the apocalypse to eat purslane, dandelion greens and nettles.