This summer, we have all been learning more about plants. Trinity has her garden, Harley is making herbal medicines and I am exploring wild foods again. This summer, we have tried these easy to identify foods growing right in our back yard! ( and here I have links to foraging sites about each one)
Dandelions young leaves taste like lettuce- older leaves are bitter
Yellow Wood Sorrel(aka Sleeping Beauty, aka Shamrock)- sour- tastes like lemons
Ground Ivy ( aka Gill Over the Ground, aka Creeping Charlie)- strongly herbal, Raymond liked it, the rest of us didn't really enjoy it as a salad green, but might make good tea or flavoring.
Common Chickweed tastes like corn, sort of, chewy.
White Clover- fragrant and tasty- as long as they are green/white.. brown is not good for salad, but can be turned into flour.
DISCLAIMER: please do not ingest wild foods unless you are positive of their identifying characteristics, and equally positive that either they have no poisonous look alikes, or that they possess NONE of the look alikes' identifying characteristics. The wild foods mentioned in this particular blog are very easy to identify and most people know them well. They also do not have poisonous look alikes-but do be careful to go to the links and positively identify them anyway:)
Yesterday, we harvested wild clover form our yard and the empty lot near our home. We gathered 2 zippered sandwich bags of the white flower heads. That seems like a lot, but as I type this, I can see our yard, and we have barely made a dent in the population!
Anyway, these two bags, when rinsed, sorted and chopped make about once cup. I love the scent of clover- it filled my house as i chopped them on the cutting board:)
Clover Corn Bread ( Recipe from " Identifying and Harvesting Edibleand Medicinal Plants")
To tell you the truth, I probably should have allowed the clover to dry after I rinsed it, but i didn't figure it mattered.. it did. this stuff didn't dry out enough, but it does smell and taste very good to me. Harley commented that it tasted like salad and bread mixed together, but I betcha that if he didn't know what was in it he would have loved it. Rowan enjoyed it, and Trinity has not had any yet. it is not a SWEET cornbread recipe- what my Tennessee relatives called "Johnny Cake" ( like the commercially made corn muffin mix) this is a whole grain and corn meal quick bread that is not sugary.
anyway... here goes...
3 Tablespoons vinegar
1/2 cup oil
2 eggs
1 and 1/2 cups apple juice
1 tablespoon honey
1 cup barley or whole wheat flour ( we used whole wheat)
2 cups cornmeal
1 cup finely chopped dried or fresh white clover flowers
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
2 and 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
Preheat oven to 300. Combine liquid ingredients in a bowl. Combine dry ingredients in another. Add the liquid to the dry mixture and blend thoroughly. Pour batter into an oiled 9x 13 pan and bake for 20-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
Hope you try it- this is the perfect time of year to harvest the clover.
