I have, for a few weeks now, become interested in the idea of foraging. I love plants, and I love food, and the idea of reconnecting with wild, native food sources is really intriguing to me at the moment. And today I took my first baby step into putting that interest into action.
I discovered that I have a large patch of lambsquarter growing in my backyard. What was, until a couple days ago, some unidentified weed growing wild behind my house, suddenly is something I now see as a big crop of free food! So this morning I took the leap and cooked some of it.
I heated up some bacon fat, cooked up some onions and garlic, and added a big handful of the lambsquarter. It was so fun to watch it transform from this pale, dusty green to a deep vibrant color as it cooked. Seasoned with salt and pepper, of course.
I paired my cooked greens with a runny egg and sourdough toast topped with rhubarb jam for breakfast this morning. (Both the bread and the jam are my own creations too, by the way.)
Lambsquarter is sometimes referred to as wild spinach, and it seems to be a good name for it. When cooked, the flavor is very similar, though it’s a bit less tender and didn’t wilt as much as spinach does. It keeps a bit more bite than spinach, which I found quite pleasant. The leaves have a hydrophobic coating which I feel has transferred to my teeth a little after having eaten it - my mouth feels a little bit like the way tannins in wine do, just a little dry. It’s not unpleasant, but it was a surprising and unexpected sensation.
All in all, lambsquarter gets a big thumbs up from me! I’d be happy to incorporate it into other cooking applications in the future. And there’s still tons of it in my yard, so I’ll have plenty of opportunities to do it.
In the meantime I’m keeping an eye on a few other plants in my yard that I know are edible. It’s a bit late in the season for dandelions, though I’ve identified a small handful that are about to bloom again, and I’m hoping to snatch them up as soon as they’ve opened so I can fry the blossoms. I also have a lot of wood sorrel that took over an otherwise abandoned flower pot in the front yard. I’ve munched on it before and it’s delicious, but I’m thinking about grabbing a lot of it to add to a salad. I think it might be good with some fresh peas. I’ve also got roses growing out front, and when the season is right I want to try to do something with the rose hips, and I’ve identified several places nearby where sumac grows so I’m planning to harvest some berries when the weather starts getting cold.
But today was my first real venture into cooking with foraged plants, and I’d call it a success! This hobby is new to me and perhaps a bit weird to others, but I’m excited by it and hope I can expand my knowledge bit by bit and continue to experiment in the kitchen.
