Everything Is Edible ONCE

Lambs quarters are delicious, like spinach, according to descriptions on television and on the Web that I've seen earlier this month. I love, love, love my greens, including spinach and collards, so the idea that a prolific weed could be not only free but also fabu-licious and nutritious got me so excited I was ready to throw on my sneakers and run out the door with a big bag like some hunter-gatherer ancestor tens of thousands of years ago.

At the same time, I'd be oh, so up-to-the-minute in the locavore movement by locally harvesting uncultivated, or foraged, foods (ie. weeds).

"You can use them in gourmet and delicious ways and make really amazing dishes," Iso Rabins, founder of ForageSF, told the San Francisco Chronicle in a story yesterday about the foraged food movement.

But like my hunter-gatherer ancestors, I must have some instinct for danger. I don't know why, but a little voice inside said, "Not so fast," and I decided to do a little digging into the Internet before digging into my yard last week.

Good thing I did. Apparently, many delicious and very healthful weeds have some rather unhealthful -- make that poisonous and potentially deadly -- doppelgangers.
Hello!

Lambs quarters, which I was ready to run out and grab, apparently look pretty similar to deadly nightshade. At this point, I'm expecting some experienced forager or botanist to write me to say, "Puh-leeze! It's easy to tell the difference." I'm sure -- once I get the chance to learn properly what both look like. But I've never knowingly seen nightshade outside of Internet pictures, and I've read accounts of other people making the mistake.

That got me to to thinking that there must be other green treats that an inexperienced forager or gardener could confuse with a dangerous double -- especially as more people I know seem to be into growing and picking their own food. Some of my findings:

Purslane -- A sprawling succulent that contains good nutrients including omega 3 fatty acids.

Spurge, above, looks like purslane

Hey! I've seen that all over my flower bed, near my lavender.  But looking more closely, I see there are two types of weeds that appeared to be likely candidates. Which was the purslane? Good thing I double, then triple checked -- and checked some more. Mixed in were plenty of specimens of a weed called spurge, which is -- you guessed it -- poisonous. It isn't AS deadly as some things you could ingest, but it's still important to become familiar with the real thing versus the imposter.

Wild carrots, aka Queen Anne's lace -- This pretty and purportedly edible weed has a very evil twin, also in the carrot / parsley family, called poison hemlock. Yep, it's the same thing that killed Socrates. They look enough alike and hemlock is so poisonous that even after I familiarize myself with them, I think I'll steer clear. This spring, a Tacoma, Wash., woman died of apparent hemlock poisoning after putting the plant into a salad, thinking that it was something else, according to a county medical investigator. A Bellingham, Wash., man also was poisoned but survived after picking hemlock from his garden because it looked like one of the vegetables he had planted. Hemlock resembles several members of the same plant group, including parsley and parsnip, and it grows all across the United States.

Ramps -- These wild leeks can resemble the toxic lily of the valley. Similarly, you don't want to mistake death camas for wild onion or wild garlic.

Blue violets -- The leaves and flowers are edible, but the rhizome is poisonous. Poisonous  larkspur and monkshood may look similar to violets to some of us city-suburban folk.

Wild grapes -- Don't confuse wild grapes with potentially deadly moonseed.

I could go on and on, but I think I made the point. Don't eat anything unless you are absolutely certain that you know it's safe.

When I was younger, ignorance was bliss, and I didn't know it was potentially dangerous. I used to snack on wild blueberries and strawberries growing in the woods around my home. Where the yard met a bit of open field, I'd chew leaves of sorrel to let the sourness start the juices flowing in my mouth. In the same fields grew beautiful stands of Queen Anne's lace -- aka wild carrot -- or so I thought. Luckily I didn't try it, because I didn't know back then that it could have been hemlock -- aka the last thing I ate.

Nowadays, I highly recommend a bit of education before picking something and popping it into your mouth. Check out the local university extension to find out if there is a plant expert or class you can hook up with to learn about the plants you're interested in before going off on your own to forage.

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The Foxfire series of books got me interested in living off the land when I came across them in the late 1970s.

The New York Times' Ava Chin discusses gathering shepherd's purse, a wild member of the mustard family.

New York-based naturalist "Wildman" Steve Brill maintains a web site where readers can forage for more information on wild edibles.

Update added Sept. 26, 2010: A cautionary tale of "The Mistaken Mushroom," by Mark Vonnegut.
Added Oct. 11, 2010: Chef Jonathon Sawyer is sickened by foraged mushroom.

In the following audio report, New York public radio station reports on foodie-foragers Marc Matsumoto and Jonathan Landau, who hunt for such wild goodies as fiddleheads and ramps.

I Could Quit Anytime I Want

 Thanks to some German researchers, my vice just became "therapy."

The researchers, studying more than 19,000 people for about eight years, report a link between daily consumption of a small amount of chocolate and a reduced risk of heart attack or stroke. Study subjects who ate an average of 7.5 grams of chocolate per day, or roughly the equivalent of one square of one chocolate bar, had a 39 percent lower risk of heart attack or stroke compared with those who consumed an average of 1.7 grams daily. The study was just published in the European Heart Journal.

This isn't the first study of potential health benefits tied to chocolate, although it is the first to follow people over such a long period.

(Note that the the square of Valrhona at left, at 11 grams, could be considered an overdose -- as if there is such a concept when it comes to chocolate.)

The study's lead author, Brian Buijsse, with the German Institute of Human Nutrition, and other experts cautioned against going crazy with cocoa and said more research, specifically randomized trials, was needed to confirm whether chocolate was the cause of the benefit and if so, how it worked. Maybe people who eat small amounts of chocolate also like to exercise. Or maybe they don't eat as many potato chips (or other junk) as non-chocolate consumers. Pigging out on chocolate could just make us all gain weight, which itself is a risk factor for heart attacks and stroke.

Hmmm, what to do? I think I'll run to the pantry for a little piece of chocolate -- for medicinal purposes.

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Meet the Jetsons
I use my microwave oven mainly to reheat leftovers, occasionally melt butter or bake a potato. But in the past week or so, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times have informed me that I've missed the latest developments. Apparently, I was living in a cave when the convection-microwave and the microwave-steam oven hit the market. However did I manage not to starve?

Kim Severson reports in the Times about not just microwaves but all sorts of appliances designed to do the work -- and the thinking -- for me. "Forget sous vide and braising and the farm-to-table ethos. We are a nation that cooks with an index finger," she writes. Among the other gadgets: one that with a single touch will poach an egg simultaneously while browning toast, an oven with a "perfect turkey" button and a bread maker that bakes a cake with the press of a finger.

I don't take offense as much as author-chef Michael Ruhlman seems to in his rant ("America: Too Stupid to Cook...") in response to the assumption that consumers either can't cook or don't have time. But I do find the bells and whistles pretty ridiculous and funny.

Now find me a washing machine that folds my laundry and I'll stop laughing and open my wallet.

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A Farm to Table Bottleneck
The demand for locally raised meat, part of the buy-local food (or locavore) movement, outstrips the capacity of slaughterhouses in some areas, writes the Times' Katie Zezima in "Push to Eat Local Food Is Hampered by Shortage."