Are those weeds edible?

I had the pleasure to take a tour with wildman Steven Brill through our farm and the neighboring wooden trail. Here is what we found and learned

Edible Food We Found

Foxtail Grass - edible grains can be eaten raw or cooked.



Amaranth - we got some seeds from it (which is used as grain). It's great in stir fries and is easy to prepare. Enya even has a song about it :)


Lambs Quarters - European relative of spinach and beets and can be eater raw or cooked.


Wild Yellow Watercress - similar tasting to regular watercress and just as nutritious too!


Ladies thumb - another edible plant that grows plentifully on the compost heap.



Wood Sorrel 3 leaves shaped like hearts are sour like sorrel, which also grows in my garden



Wild Carrot - smells like a carrot, hairy stalk. Can eat the root and the seeds can be used instead of caraway seeds. More here


Black Locut Tree - Black locust blossoms taste something like sweet peas with a hint of vanilla, and their wonderful aroma and subtle flavor lend themselves magnificently in a variety of dishes



Wild Amenity - can't find any info on it online, so I may have the spelling wrong. It's edible and grows in abundance. It has triangular leaves and sharp stalks and down the middle of the leaf. eat the smaller leaves without much sharp spikes.



White pine -British soldiers made their boats out of them, and it was illegal to cut one down by anyone but the gov. But it's also good for making tea from the needles I hear.


Garlic Mustard - this is the mustard seed pod with edible seeds


Wild Grapes - I think they are the Fox Grape variety, the father of the concord grape that
is very sour and mmm good.


Black Walnuts- taste similar to regular walnuts, but much stronger. I use them in baking banana
oat cookies


Burdock Root - Used in chinese cooking

Also saw some Non -Edible, but useful to know plants

• Common Plantain
• Mug Wort
• Yarrow
• Jewel weed
• Poison Ivy

Philadelphia Inquirer apparently had someone on the tour as well and wrote a nice article about our adventures that day.

It was a very good learning experience, and I had since discovered other wild plants that are edible as well right in my back yard.  Wild Purslane - didn't see on the tour but I had seen a recipe,  wood sorrel, dandelions.  On our stroll through the neighborhood my son and I we also saw some lamb quarters and more wood sorrel.  And then  I was asked "What's that daddy?"  and I didn't know, but I promised to look it up and get back to him.

Garden update August 2009

See my Garden grow up this year with this photo slideshow

3 tips for a kids healthy nutritious breakfast and lunch

1. Making a morning smoothie or packing one from the night before is a great way to get some nutritious vegetables into your child's diet. You can practically sneak anything into it and since it will be blended up, unrecognizable, pulverized! The possibilities are endless as to whats in it, so give it a try. Start with something your kids are sure to like like Fruit/berries and slowly add ingredients as they get used to it

Try to blend or add to it once finished

Liquid (water/juice/nut milk)

+ Fruit (banana/apple/pear)

+ Fresh/Frozen Berries(blueberries, strawberries)

+ Veggies(celery, broccoli, peas)

+ Greens(spinach, kale, arugula).

+ Beans/Legumes(any bean - start with a small amount)

+ Seeds (blend some in or grind some raw seeds and sprinkle on top)

Make it from whatever you have available at home, and don't follow a recipe. Just try to experiment. You can use frozen fruit/berries or ice to make it colder. Putting in raisins, dates, and other dried fruit soaked in juice or water overnight will add sweetness to it. Color and texture is also important to consider: adding ingredients such as cooked beet(red), blueberries(blue) green(spinach or kale) orange is tricky so stick with carrots /oranges and fruit. white(banana, coconut). You can also add breakfast muesli or oatmeal on top with ground up seeds.

2. Always pack healthy food options even if you think they "won't eat that". My kids surprise me all the time and eat what they refuse to even try at home. So pack it for them anyway and you will also be surprised. Their hunger and a different environment will also play a role in different attitude towards the same foods, so don't play it safe by only packing foods that you know they like.

3. Making food ahead of time and freezing it for a quick meal prep helps when we don't have time and need to rush out. Soups, smoothies, corn, peas, all are good options. Just take out the soup the night before to defrost or defrost in the microwave in the morning.

Writing off that csa membership?

Just had an idea: Wouldn't it be nice if we can write off the cost of the csa membership off our taxes?

1. Promote local farming and sustainable agriculture
2. Promote healthy eating via increase in fruit/vegetable consumption and save money of health care cost as a result.
3. Reduce greenhouse gas and pollution by decreasing demand for non-local food.

I am sure there are other benefits, but are there any drawbacks?

Invest in some new curtains for the bedrooms...

I just stumbled on the following theory "making the room very dark at night may help us feel better" after reading a newsletter Alex from rawguru.com sent out.

I looked it up and apparently we make more melatonin when the room is more dark, pitch black is best. We know that good sleep is important for health and this may help with that.

Here is a nice overview of melatonin

Darkness Produces Melatonin

"It's not so much that light is bad for us as that darkness is good for us. Thus, not getting enough darkness can be harmful to our health. That's odd, isn't it? Our ancestors would surely not have understood this paradox, but we are beginning to understand it, thanks to medical research that has shed new, uh, light on the subject of darkness.

..we can, and should, consider darkness to be our friend, physiologically speaking. The reason is that darkness—or, to put it the other way, the absence of light—stimulates the production of a hormone,melatonin, from its immediate precursor, the neurotransmitter serotonin. Like serotonin, melatonin plays important roles in our physical and mental well-being. ...During daylight hours, melatonin production is minimal, and blood levels of this hormone remain low. When night falls, however, and the ambient light level plummets, the absence of light induces biochemical changes that cause melatonin production to increase dramatically, about 2 hours later. That's when we begin to feel sleepy, the signal that it's time to go to bed. Melatonin levels peak during the night and then decline to their previously low levels by morning—time to wake up.

Instead, We Turn on the Lights

In an ideal world, we would go with the flow of nature's circadian rhythms, obeying the melatonin signal by going to bed and getting a good night's sleep (which for most people means 7 to 9 hours, depending on individual needs). Alas, however, our modern world is far from ideal in this regard. When night falls, we turn on the lights, thereby suppressing the melatonin signal and interfering with the circadian rhythms that millions of years of evolution have programmed us for. Instead of getting ready for bed, we keep on working or playing, doing chores, pursuing hobbies, watching TV, etc. For some of us, actually, our day is just beginning, as we prepare to go to our night-shift jobs, where we'll be exposed to bright light all night long.

Our poor biological clocks get thrown out of whack by all this. In a very real sense, we are fooling Mother Nature, and, as everyone knows, that's not nice. It's also unhealthy. The most obvious casualty is adequate and restful sleep. With our busy, fast-paced lifestyles, and with deficient levels of melatonin in our systems during the night, we sleep poorly and not enough. The result is a population that is chronically and dangerously sleep-deprived, with consequent fatigue, irritability, depression, impaired reflexes, and susceptibility to accidents, just to name a few. Night-shift work exacerbates most of these problems and is seen as a serious threat to the workers' health. Poor or inadequate sleep can even lead to premature death.¹*

*For more on melatonin and sleep, see Melatonin Is Good … for … Zzzz (July 2002), Better Sleep May Mean Longer Life (June 2003), Melatonin Can Reset Your Biological Clock (March 2005), and Had Any Good Sleep Lately? (June 2005).