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Noodles and Weeds!

© Barbara Hall

Ah, it's that time of year again. The time when the planet just kind of sprouts out in free food. As the years go by I have come to recognize the certain seedlings when they are truly microscopic and know not to get TOO busy cleaning up every garden, because I could be weeding out DINNER.

I was introduced to eating wild greens at Susun Weed's during my apprenticeship there. In her freezer were plastic bags full of cooked greens marked not "spinach" or "swiss chard," but rather "lamb's quarters" and "amaranth." We gave each other some hesitant sideways glances during the first meals for which we pulled these new strange things out of the freezer, but soon we were ravenous for them.

There's a certain Euell-Gibbonification that goes on when one starts speaking of wild food. Euell Gibbons had that certain Mikey-he'll-eat-anything reputation and if you read his books with a sharp eye, it's amazing how often the suggestion of using plenty of salt and butter comes up. Hey. I could probably eat CARDBOARD with enough salt and butter on it!

But lamb's quarters are a whole different story. Over and over I feed them to friends and watch the inevitable "Hey, this is really GOOD!" stuff start to happen.

So come, squirrels, follow me and I'll show you where dinner grows...probably right in your own garden beds!

First off, let's make sure we have the right plant...CHENOPODIUM ALBUM. Got that? The reason you need to GET THAT is because this particular plant also goes by the names goosefoot, pigweed, wild spinach, fat hen, allgood, frost blite, mutton tops, dirtweed (oh, yummers!), baconweed, dirty dick, muck hill, midden myles, melgs, or...(where's Martha Stewart when you need her) DUNG WEED! How appetizing. It got a few of those names for popping up all lush and happy on the manure and compost piles!

OK, so it's pretty common-looking. One sure tip-off is the "mealy" little beads that come off on your fingers when you touch the center of the new leaves. Rather feels like silica beads when you rub your fingers together. My rule of thumb about what parts you can eat is just that. If you can pinch it off with your thumb, it's the part you eat. When I really get on a roll (or company's coming), I'll go out into the cutting garden or vegetable garden and cut the larger plants down to just before the first set of leaves so they'll make more shoots for later. Early in the season I WILL actually pull up the seedlings if they're taking over the flower garden but I pinch off the roots and eat the rest.