Dining on dandelions

By Jomay Steen, Journal staff | Thursday, August 21, 2008

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Gayla Spelts, Mary Garry and Mark Garry were deciding whether to pour a creamy dressing or vinaigrette over their greens, but the real eating adventure was the salad. Made from 10 different plants — none found in Rapid City’s commercial grocery stores — the salad was assembled as part of Cynthia Dumdey’s “Eating Your Weedies” lecture last week.

As a dozen people gamely took their first bite of a mix of chickweed, miner’s lettuce, dandelion greens, wild onion, plantain, red clover leaves, mint, roses, pansies and dianthus, they also took a step in broadening their palate for new foods.

Spelts was surprised at the salad’s taste, texture and especially the availability of the plants.

“My salad was good. I liked it,” she said of the after-lecture dish. “Compared to what we have to choose from in supermarkets, we do miss out on flavor.”

Dumdey, a certified herbalist and nutritional herbologist, had foraged the grasses, plants, flowers and succulents from her own herbal garden as well as the open fields and trails found in the Black Hills and near the Wyoming border.

“These plants can be found in your yards and along roads, but I would be careful about what I harvested,” she said.

Dumdey is careful to keep away from plants that may be coated with insecticides, herbicides or residue from heavy traffic, and also stresses getting plant books to help with identification of the 120,000 edible plants beyond her lecture. She recommended “Peterson Field Guides” by Steven Foster and James A. Duke.

When she talks about gathering these succulents, grasses and tubers, she also talks about the stewardship of the land. A recent visit across her neighborhood field found a favorite patch of wild Echinacea, which Dumdey points out can be grown as a perennial in a flower garden. When she returned to gather some of this medicinal herb for one of her tinctures, it was gone.

“I got a letter from a student saying they had more than what they could ever use it for,” she said of the rare flower. Dumdey said this sort of practice not only wastes plants, but endangers plant survival in the wild.

“Never take more than you need,” she said.

Her lecture was part of her “Dining in the Wilds” class and was sponsored by the Wholistic Health Society of the Black Hills and held July 15 at Canyon Lake Senior Center.

Her next lecture about foraging into the wild, “A Walk in the Weeds,” has yet to be announced. But it is sure to have a following of naturalists, mountaineers and those who want to expand their cooking skills beyond a grocery store’s produce bin.

Dumdey will introduce the group to the herbs in her own garden before taking them to a field with goals of identifying edible herbs; carefully harvesting the plants, nuts, seeds and berries; and learning the kinds of nutrition they can provide as well as the healing benefits.

“It adds a lot of variety to your menu,” she said.

Spelts said she always has been interested in finding out what sort of plants are edible in the wild. This botanical knowledge is something that Spelts said she would use in the future.

“It’s a good time of year to have this class and tomorrow night I can go into the woods and forage my own salad,” she said.

When the Garrys recently built their new home, they noted how the native plants returned in abundance to the disturbed ground. Through chance, the Rapid City couple now has a plot designated to an interesting mix of wildflowers, plants and “weeds” — like those used in the salad.

“We created our own native plants site, and it opened our eyes to a whole new world,” Mary Garry said. “The taste of the salad is much more intense. When you think of Native people and how they used these plants that we think of as weeds … they can eat a simple salad and improve their health with it.”

This sort of meal, a salad packed with vitamins, minerals and medicinal qualities, doesn’t come from a pre-packaged mix, she said.

“These edible plants have a lot of value to them,” she said.

Dumdey agrees.

“Basically, it’s all about getting in touch with nature,” she said.

Contact Jomay Steen at 394-8418 or jomay.steen@rapidcityjournal.com.

Edibility rules

Here are some rules on eating wild plants from Cynthia Dumdey:

* Never eat large quantities of an unknown food without first testing it.

* When in doubt, chew a berry or small portion of a plant to taste possible bitterness or astringency. Spit it out.

* When cooking facilities are available while camping, cook the plant for 5 to 15 minutes. Take a teaspoon of the plant and hold it in your mouth for five minutes. If no burning sensation is noted, then swallow it. Wait eight hours. If there are no ill effects such as nausea, cramps or diarrhea, you may eat more and wait another eight hours. If no ill effects are noted, the plant should be edible.

* Cook all plant foods when in doubt of their edibility. However, cooking does not always destroy toxicity.

* When cooking facilities are not available, it is generally considered safe to try foods that you observe being eaten by birds and mammals. However, this does not always hold true as birds will eat baneberries, etc.

* Never eat wild mushrooms.

* Avoid eating unknown plants with milky juice, although some edible plants with milky juice include dandelion, wild lettuce, milkweed, figs and papaya.

* Many blue and black berries are edible. Red berries are sometimes edible. White berries are never edible.

Edibility Rule

If it’s blue, it’s good for you

If it’s red, use your head

If it’s white, do not bite.

—Andrew Manthe

Basics for eating wild plants safely

* Do not eat anything you cannot positively identify.

* Study and learn all you can about edible wild plants of your area. If possible, take someone acquainted with the plants along with you to point them out. Have several field guides and cross reference plants, using pictures and all information given.

* Use scientific names along with the common names — there are plenty of plants by the common name of pigweed, but there is only one scientific name for a plant.

* Go on field trips to identify and sample plants you have learned about. You may add only three or four new plants in a season, but it’s worth it.

* Know the plant’s habitat, when it’s in season and what part is

edible.

* Learn to recognize the plant in all stages of development: shoots, flowering parts, fruits or tubers.

* The growing tissues of plants are generally edible, such as bright green tips, crown or hearts of grasses, white shoots of bamboo.

* Know the common poisonous plants of the area. Find out, when learning about a new plant, if there is a poisonous plant that looks like it.

* Avoid known poisonous plants, grasses with ergot, fungus growth, discoloration or black spurs.

* Do not eat too much at first — our stomachs are accustomed to a different type of food so bring in the wild edibles gradually.

* If greens are bitter, cook in more than one batch of water, changing water until the greens are mild.

* Watch out for contamination — don’t eat plants along well-traveled highways where you could get lead poisoning.

* Do not eat plants in an area that has been sprayed with pesticides.

* Add extra bleach or halazone to water used for washing watercress, cattail and other raw foods from possibly contaminated water.

—Journal staff

Recipes from the wild

Tossed Salad

     Numerous wild greens can be used in a tossed salad such as chickweed (mild), mustard (peppery), purslane (succulent), plantain (get when tender), watercress (peppery), dandelion (use when young), sorrel (tart), peppergrass (peppery), sourgrass (sour), wild onions, etc. Toss with tomatoes, carrots, celery or other vegetables. Serve with your favorite dressing.

Southern Italian Dandelion

     4 cups tender dandelion leaves

     1 medium potato, peeled and cubed

     1 onion, medium

     1 (8-ounce) can of tomatoes

     2 teaspoons cooking oil

     Steam greens and cubed potato for 15 minutes. Simmer onion in cooking oil in large pan over medium heat until tender; add greens and potatoes. Add tomatoes, stir together and heat. Other greens could be substituted in this recipe. Serves 2.

Lamb’s Quarters Soup

     6-8 cups lamb’s quarters leaves and seeds

     1 large onion

     1 teaspoon salt

     1 clove garlic, crushed

     2 tablespoons whole-wheat flour

     1/4 cup evaporated milk

     1/4 cup sour cream

     1 ounce pine kernels

     Cover lamb’s quarters with water and boil until tender. Add chopped onion and salt. Simmer 10 minutes. Remove from heat and cool. Put mixture in blender; puree. Add garlic and blend again. Stir in flour and milk mixture and cook 1/2 minute, stirring constantly. Add sour cream. Pour into bowls and float pine kernels in center.

Dandelion Jelly

     Petals from 40 flowers

     3 cups water

     1 package of Sure Gel

     3-3/4 cups sugar or 1-3/4 cups honey

     Pull petals from flower heads and wash. Add petals to boiling water. Steep and drain, returning juice to the heat. Boil and add Sure Gel immediately. Boil mixture for 1 minute and add sugar (or honey) and simmer until it is at a hardball consistency.

— Cynthia Dumdey