Blogs for April, 2014

I spent a few of my formative years in the south, and though it took me some time (and lots of swimming pools and iced tea) to adjust to the heat, humidity, and slower pace of life it enforces, I miss it. I miss that the very air has a weight to it, slowing you down as you move through a day that I can only describe as “soupy.”

I find ways to revisit the south, through literature—the stories of Flannery O’Connor, or television—if you haven’t seen the first season of “Rectify,” watch now to live inside a gothic southern story.  So when I saw that “Mud” was streaming on Netflix, I settled in to be transported to the dark waters and swamps of the Arkansas Delta, a region of the Mississippi River Alluvial Plain, sometimes called the Mississippi embayment. In it, Matthew McConaughey pays a man who is known as Mud. On the run from the law, Mud befriends two 14 year old boys. It’s a beautiful story about the belief in love, the friendships that can sustain you, and what to do in case of snake bite. (Spoiler alert – but really? The foreshadowing is pretttty heavy-handed for that one.)

Watching Mud struggle to survive on a deserted island of the Delta, I began to wonder. If he’d just been a Boy Scout, might he have foraged his meals from the land, and not have to convince kids to steal cans of beans for him?

Googling edible plants in the Arkansas Delta, I discovered Osmunda claytoniana, the “Interrupted Fern,” named for the gap in the blade that wither and fall off.  “Fragmentary foliage resembling Osmunda claytoniana has been found in the fossil record as far back as the Triassic,” Wikipedia tells me.  So clearly the plant is a survivor. But could it help our man Mud survive his time in the wild, as his bag of sandwich bread runs low?

They’re beautiful ferns. I recommend planting them, if you live on the eastern side of the U.S. And a bonus, they’re deer-resistant. But. “Unlike those of the Ostrich Fern, the Interrupted Fern’s fiddleheads are not readily edible, due to their bitter taste and a tendency to cause diarrhea. The base of the stipe and very young buds are edible.”

They lost me at diarrhea. A man on the lam does not need that.  Moving on.

Not surprisingly, dandelions grow on the Delta, and as I previously posted, dandelion greens are the fountain of youth, and would have kept Mud supplied in iron and vitamin E.

Camellias are edible as well – and since they often bloom in the late fall, they can double as garnish for your holiday meals. Mud was a man of faith, in the power of love, in the curative properties of bonfires, in the luck inherent in certain objects. I think he would have boiled some camellias into a tisane.  The flowers are used for teas, and known for their antioxidants, they may also play a role in treating cancer. Though the studies are inconclusive, green tea from the camellia plant contains polyphenolics that may inhibit the formation of tumors.

Sassafras – Trails.com notes that sassafras is a main ingredient in the making of gumbo, and the small bush has black colored berries that have been used in the United States for over four hundred years.  If Mud could procure molasses, the roots of sassafras, when boiled, could be made into his own, artisanal, criminal-on-the-run root beer.

If you were deserted on an isle, would you know what to eat?  Check out my previous post on growing edible gardens. I’d love to know what you forage from your garden, or from your morning walk – leave us a note in the comment section, or on Twitter @TheCityFarm & @RebeccaSnavely.

(Photo credit: Interrupted Fern;  Dandelion Greens, Sassafras, Camellia)

Could a dandelion save your life?  Maaaaybe not.  But it could make it a whole lot longer.  The NYT Magazine piece entitled “The Island Where People Forget to Die” references the Grecian diet of dandelion greens that contribute to this small isle’s longevity. Dr. Ilias Leriadis, a local doctor on the Greek island of Ikaria, a place populated with healthy 90-somethings, spoke about a local “’mountain tea.” Made from dried herbs endemic to the island, the tea is enjoyed as an end-of-the-day cocktail. “He mentioned wild marjoram, sage (flaskomilia), a type of mint tea (fliskouni), rosemary and a drink made from boiling dandelion leaves and adding a little lemon. ‘People here think they’re drinking a comforting beverage, but they all double as medicine,’ Leriadis said.”

I always loved dandelions, the bright yellow flowers cheery, the puffy white heads just begging to be blown into the air. With one puff, the beautiful seeds float away into the air, slowly landing wherever the wind took them. Then I was caught – a spreader of weeds in my mother’s garden. But, as DailyOm’s Madisyn Taylor notes, “one person’s weed is another person’s wildflower.” Weeds are defined by their tendency to thrive, often where they are not wanted. “In a sense, weeds are harbingers of this wildness, pushing their way into our well-ordered plots, undermining more delicate flora, and flourishing in spite of us.”

I tend to thrive in a wild, overgrown garden, too. And, as food prices rise and I continually learn how important digging in the dirt is to both my soul and my stomach, I love being able to eat from the earth, especially in case of that pesky zombie apocalypse.  And, if you don’t want to treat your lawn with chemical fertilizers or weed-killers, harvesting your dandelions will help keep them in check.

According to SF Gate, dandelion greens “provide four times as much calcium, 1.5 times as much vitamin A and 7.5 times as much vitamin K as broccoli. This leafy green vegetable also contains twice as much iron and three times as much riboflavin as spinach, and, while spinach provides no vitamin E or carotenoids, dandelion greens boast 17 percent of the daily adult dose of vitamin E and 13,610 international units, or IUs, of lutein and zeaxanthin per 3.5-ounce serving. However, dandelion greens are lower in vitamin C and folate than either spinach or broccoli,” so mix up your garden and your diet.

To eat like a Greek, add dandelion greens to your tea or salad, Ikaria-style.  The lifestyle on the island sounds like a dream for those of us longing to escape the race of rats in the city.  Describing a day in the life of one couple, Buettner writes, “Like that of almost all of Ikaria’s traditional folk, their daily routine unfolded. … Wake naturally, work in the garden, have a late lunch, take a nap. At sunset, they either visited neighbors or neighbors visited them. Their diet was also typical: a breakfast of goat’s milk, wine, sage tea or coffee, honey and bread. Lunch was almost always beans (lentils, garbanzos), potatoes, greens (fennel, dandelion or a spinachlike green called horta) and whatever seasonal vegetables their garden produced; dinner was bread and goat’s milk.”

Who’s moving with me to Ikaria? As long as my Netflix works there, I’m IN.

If you’re not ready to retire to a Greek island, are you ready to embrace the weeds in your yard?  If you’re foraging for dandelion greens, be sure to avoid places where weed killer may have been sprayed. How will you prepare them? “The tender leaves can be sautéed like kale, and the flowers are prime for dipping in tempura batter and frying or baking into a sunny loaf of bread. Even the root is edible, making for a coffee-like drink or base for ice cream,” writes Leslie Kelly, over at SeriousEats.

So the next time you see the delicate puffy ball of dandelion seed poking up through your garden, let go the stress of a weed-free life, enjoy blowing the beautiful seeds into the winds, and then reap the benefits and greens of the dandelion.

(Photo Credit: Ramon Felinto)