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Jun. 20, 2007
Every year Americans spend hundreds of millions of dollars on herbicides that kill plants far more nutritious and oftentimes just as tasty as expensive garden vegetables sold in the local supermarket. Too many Americans demand a uniculture, a kind of ecological fascism, so their lawns can look like golf course putting greens. I think these lawns are rather dull and the whole lawn care industry a shameful extravagant waste. Pretty yellow and purple flowers are more attractive than a Nazi-green lawn, and they attract wildlife--the bunnies, the birds, the butterflies, the bees. I never spend a cent on herbicides, never push a lawn mower. Instead, I buy and plant weed seeds, and if it all gets high enough to hide snakes or harbor mosquitoes, I cut it down with a scythe.
Dandelion and chicory are closely related and among the most nutritious of any vegetable. They're high in iron, vitamin C, beta-carotene, pottassium, and fiber. If fertilized, chicory flowers over a long period and is an impressive ornamental. The young leaves make a great salad, having a pleasant bitter taste comparable to endive lettuce. Harvest the roots, roast them, grind them, and make a coffee that tastes like chocolate. Red amaranth is a wonderful plant that produces thousands of seeds so it's only necessary to buy seeds once. This beautiful plant grows as tall as corn with seed heads sometimes shaped like elephant trunks, depending on the variety. The young seedlings make good cooked greens tasting like Swiss chard. Lambs' Quarters are a cut-and-grow-back vegetable. Harvest the triangularly shaped leaves and the faithful plant will grow more. This is the ancestor of modern day spinach and tastes much the same. For seasoning a wild salad pungent wild mustard, savory wild onions and garlic, refreshing mint, and sour purslane and sorrel are usually easy to find in weedy lots and roadsides. The standard salad dressing or French dressing is three parts oil to one part vinegar. I like using tarragon vinegar. My favorite salad is steamed broccoli or cauliflower, chilled and marinated with this dressing over night. The addition of cooked carrots and snow peas, if available, makes for a tasty and colorful presentation. This simple French dressing transforms the earthy peasant flavor of cooked lentils into a gourmet delight. I just love dressed lentils mixed with leaf lettuce and served with home made bread. Use this dressing on canned red beans and chopped sweet onion and the dish is called San Francisco Relish. Toss it with black-eyed peas, onions, and bell pepper and it's known as Texas Caviar. Leafy salads are better dressed and tossed at the table using the eye. Otherwise, they can end up too oily or vinegary. Add such things as prepared mustard, crushed garlic, and/or sugar and the dressing becomes something special. I've invented a salad dressing that surprisingly mimics Thousand Island dressing. Grind a jar of pickled beets in the food processor and mix it with mayonaisse. Tell the other salad-eaters to close their eyes and guess what the dressing's made out of. They'll like it even if they say they don't like beets. Serve the dressing on a salad of leaf lettuce, home grown tomatoes, and sweet white onion. Summer gardens frequently produce an abundance of summer squash. Try making a squash salad. Quarter the squash, toss them in olive oil, salt, and pepper; and roast them on a shallow pan at four-hundred degrees for thirty minutes. Dump the browned pieces of squash, oil and all, in a bowl and toss them in lemon juice. ------------ About the author Mark Gelbart: My book, Talk Radio, is a black comedy about a radio talk show host who gets kidnapped and psychologically tortured by a loser. http://www.authorsden.com/marksgelbart Email: agelbart@aol.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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