I wouldn't want to imagine Mexico's street food without tlacoyos con quelites (grilled corn cakes with lamb's-quarters) or Italy without ravioli d'ortica (pasta stuffed with stinging nettles).
I contacted my colleagues back on the farm, to suggest that it might be time to try marketing chickweed and lamb's-quarters again.
Lamb's-Quarters: Steamed
lamb's-quarters with apple cider vinegar.
And when we weed our gardens, we might find that the purslane, lamb's-quarters and pigweed we yank out and toss in the compost bin are as good to eat as the crops we take time and effort to cultivate!
Lamb's-quarters is a very common plant in gardens, despised because if allowed to go to seed, it will carpet the ground with new plants.
Note: Some books refer to lamb's-quarters and pigweed as the same plant.
My favorite newly discovered wild green is lamb's-quarters (Chenopodium album).
You can eat the entire aboveground part of lamb's-quarters (leaves, stems and even seeds).
Lamb's-quarters has more iron, protein, vitamin [B.sub.12] and vitamin C than raw cabbage or spinach.
Lamb's-quarters leaves are a source of ascaridole, an oil used to treat for round worms and hook worms.
It is often used here with poke,
lamb's-quarters, wild lettuce, and dandelion leaves to make a "mess of greens", being cooked in two hot water baths and seasoned with salt, pepper, butter and vinegar.
Primary Sources: Carrots (one raw carrot = 7,930 IU; the Juwarot variety has the highest vitamin A content), sweet potatoes, most DGLVs (spinach = 14,850 IU), lamb's-quarters, dandelions, violet leaves, parsley, garden cress, butternut and hubbard squashes, pumpkins and cantaloupes.
Primary Sources: Sunflower seeds (3.3 mg), kidney bean sprouts, mushrooms, millet, DGLVs (collards = .38 mg, broccoli = .31 mg), dried beans and peas, amaranth and lamb's-quarters.
Primary Sources: Sunflower seeds (3.3 mg.), kidney bean sprouts, mushrooms, millet, DGLVs (collards = .38 mg., broccoli = .31 mg.), dried beans and peas, amaranth, and lamb's-quarters.
Calcium levels are also high in spinach, chard, sorrel, beet greens, lamb's-quarters, parsley, rhubarb, and wheat bran, but calcium is poorly utilized in these foods because of their high oxalic acid content.
