Senin, 05 Mei 2008

Spring Beauty (Claytonia lanceolata)


Now that the valley is bursting with life we will be harvesting more and more wild food for our meals. Today my husband spent a few hours harvesting spring beauties. We had this beautiful salad for dinner. We ate the entire aerial plant which is high in vitamins A and C. It tastes much like miner's lettuce from the western part of Washington state. They are both in the Purslane family of the claytonia genus. He also gathered a lot of the corms which we will process tomorrow, so I will post about that with pictures then.

I spent the day harvesting dandelions - the flower, leaf, and root. At herbmentor.com we are studying dandelion this month and I am looking forward to being able to participate in the dandelion discussions. It'll be a big processing day tomorrow - I can hardly wait to get started. Of course I'll take pictures of all my concoctions and share it will you.

Also tomorrow my husband plans to harvest a lot of bitterroot - also in the Purslane family. I'll of course be writing about that as well.

Wow, that's a lot of teasers for one night. :)