Kickstart the Foraging Colonist Inside You with Lambs Quarter

by Naomi Musch

As is often the case with my novelist brain, I get ideas for my stories while I’m tending my garden or picking fruit. My head clears of other to-do clutter, and at times the produce itself inspires me. Today was no exception. As I burrowed into a thick bean patch, plucking beans and pulling weeds, I got to thinking about wild edible foods my characters might have harvested.

It could be that as novelists, most of us find it difficult not to think about the foods our characters would have been eating as they embarked upon their daily tasks or set off on some adventure. In my upcoming novel Song for the Hunter, my characters forage for blackberries, dandelion greens, wild lettuce, and wild rice. In Elinor, Shannon McNear’s excellent upcoming release about a woman among those of the lost colony of Roanoke, her characters not only do quite a bit of foraging, but their foraging leads them to danger on more than one occasion.

Have you ever foraged for wild foods, be they something common like blackberries, or something less frequently sought after like wild nettles?

One place to begin is the very common but overlooked Lambs Quarter, sometimes called Goosefoot (supposedly because of the shape of the leaves. Huh...). I suspect the colonists would have used this plant since it has been both foraged and cultivated for centuries around the world, even among the Blackfoot Indians as far back as the 16th century. Lambs Quarter easily wants to take over our gardens if even a few seeds find their way in. Although it is edible and medicinal, I still have way too much of it, so that’s what I was pulling from my beans. I snapped this photo next to me. That corn patch is full of lambs quarter too. 

Despite my needing to get rid of some, Lambs Quarter is extremely nutritious, and its long taproot is good for soil, pulling minerals up to the surface where my plants can reach them. For this reason, it is also considered a “restoring” plant. It's easy to yank out when it's small, but if you let it get out of control like I did, then be prepared for a mighty tug.

The leaves of lambs quarter are exceptionally high in vitamins A and C, as well as in calcium, iron, and protein. It’s also a good source manganese and provides notable amounts of potassium and copper. Some folk call it “wild spinach”, although it’s packed with even more vitamins and minerals than spinach, and it’s easier to grow than spinach too, so there’s that. (Be sure and read my cautions below.)

Lambs Quarter can be eaten raw, steamed, boiled, or blanched. You can add lambs quarter to soups, sautés, smoothies, and juices. You can even dry some and use it as a seasoning in place of table salt. (I'm definitely trying that!) The seeds can be used as a porridge or bread enhancer or flour additive. Birds love them! (Don’t overdo the seed use, as they contain saponins. See the caution I mentioned below.)

The best way to try out your lambs quarter is by harvesting the tender tips of the plant. While the lower portions of the mature plants are woody and strong-tasting, the tender tips can be plucked off and eaten in entirety.

Lambs quarter is also said to have medicinal properties. Do you suffer from arthritis? I do. I intend to try a poultice from the simmered leaves which is claim to alleviating achy or swollen joints. Burn relief is another use for a leaf poultice. Chewing on the leaves or swishing water left from simmering the leaves is said to relieve toothaches, while Native Americans ate those leaves to treat stomachaches and prevent scurvy. Cold lambs quarter tea can be used to treat diarrhea.

A FEW DETAILS:

Up to 75,000 seeds grow in clusters at the top and on branches.

Water droplets will run off the goosefoot-shaped leaves. That's because there is a fine, crystal-like coating of wax on the leaves. This won’t harm you to ingest, by the way.

The plants grow 3’-5’ tall. You really don't want them going crazy in your carrots and beets, or you'll never find those root crops.

Lambs quarter thrives in gardens and near rivers, forests, clearings, and in disturbed soils. 

Edible parts: Leaves, shoots, seeds – alone or with other foraged leaves like dandelion, garlic mustard, or nettle.


THREE CAUTIONS:

• Lambs Quarter seeds contain saponins, a soapy-like chemical, that is potentially toxic and should not be eaten in excess. However, if you want to harvest the roots which also contain saponins, you could try them out in some scrub water for a cleaner.
• Before you run off and harvest a bushel of Lambs Quarter for your dinner salad, you should note one caution. Lambs Quarter does contain oxalic acid, so there are some discretions involved in how much you eat or how you prepare it. Cooking removes the acid, and it’s not something I’d eat raw every day in large amounts. A cup, maybe. Not a bushel. You don’t want to dive into too much of a good thing, with anything wild edible you haven’t tried. Test it in small quantities.
• Never harvest it where soil might be contaminated, though you might find it in such a location.

IT’S NOT PIGWEED

Some folks refer to lambs quarter as pigweed, but pigweed (amaranth) is a different plant—also edible—and you’ll frequently find it growing in the same places as Lambs Quarter. Pigweed is a courser, more bristly plant with darker foliage. It grows about the same height as Lambs Quarter, and also contains a spike of seeds at the top. This is another plant that takes no effort to find if you have a garden. I pulled a lot of pigweed from my bean rows too.

But, if you enjoy greens, young pigweed can also be eaten raw or cooked like spinach. It has a very mild flavor and makes a nice mix with greens that are stronger. Fresh or dried leaves can be used as tea, and the seeds are strong but nutritious also. They can be ground, used as a cereal substitute, or sprouted and added to salads. I haven’t tried it, but they say you can improve the flavor by roasting the seeds before grinding them.

What about you, have you eaten lambs quarter or pigweed?

COMING JANUARY 4, 2022 - SONG FOR THE HUNTER:

Metis Hunter Bemidii Marchal, known to Frenchwoman Camilla Bonnet as Benjamin, takes her foraging for blackberries to be used for a very special purpose. Any guesses what it might be?

Available for Pre-Order Now!

Happy foraging!

Naomi

https://naomimusch.com/

As American as Crabapple Jelly

Thanksgiving might be the most tradition-bound holiday for me. There’s no wondering what will be on the table!

We all seem to celebrate the wonders of pumpkin (well, really pumpkin spice) as soon as September rolls around, but apple pie, that’s an all together different subject. We love apple pie all year long!

"American as apple pie." (We'll leave hot dogs for another time...)

While apple pie is always on my holiday table, I'm certain it was not part of the first Thanksgiving feast in its present form. Pumpkin pie would be a no also, even though squash was likely part of that multi-day meal. Because that canned pumpkin you buy is really a squash cultivar, the lines of linking back to 1621 are blurred there…

The truth is that until European settlements became established, the only apple option was the native crabapple.

If you’ve eaten this interesting little fruit, it’s likely been in the form of jelly. Like another tart fruit, serviceberry (Amelanchier spp. for example), jellies and jams and preserves make up for that mouth-puckering taste with the addition of ‘additional’ sugar.

Apples came to the continent in bits and pieces—apples, seeds, and rootstocks. Champions of early colonial horticulture tried most fruits (and flowering plants and vegetables) in various climates and soil types throughout the new colonies. Robert Prince, likely the first and most well-known, founded a nursery in 1737 in Flushing, NY he named The Linean. (Correctly spelled Linnaean after the father of scientific classification--how things are named.)

By trial and error and a lot of persistence, Prince eventually began apple tree production along with pear and grape, and ornamental crops such as roses.

Prince became internationally known for his work, but his name is lost for the most part. Ask anyone about early apple orchards and you here only one name: Johnny Appleseed!

A skilled graftsman, Robert Prince is likely responsible for most of the apples we have now as they were based on his work. Hundreds of varieties of apples have come and gone in almost three hundred years and their geneology is well-recorded.

Today, crabapples are a common landscape tree grown for their brilliant showy spring blossoms in every hue from white to red.

Did the colonists like their apple pie? It’s said that during the Revolutionary War, General Howe ordered military protection of Prince’s huge plant nursery. Their success brought a visit by President Washington in 1789. Just when that imported fruit became part of our national identity isn’t clear, but you’ll always find both apple and pumpkin pie on my holiday table!

What was on yours?

Cooked crabapples are strained; the resulting liquid is cooked with sugar and pectin.

both photos via Creative Commons

CC BY-NC-SA 2.5

Have a wonderful, blessed holiday season my friends!

The Cheese Stands Alone!

In a world of food allergies, dieting, sustainable agriculture and the like, I’ve found cheese is one of the hardest delights to give up. Cheese, after all, is Fat And Salt, and rivals Fat And Sugar in popularity.

Did our colonial ancestors appreciate it as well? Likely so, but in different ways. As long as people have been raising or domesticating milk animals, people have been drinking milk and trying to use it before the leftovers spoil. There’s butter and there’s cheese. Farmer cheese, or pot cheese, was the standard, yet few of us eat it now, as we’ve moved on to aged cheese. Let me explain:

Farmer’s cheese uses the process of adding something to make the milk curdle. It doesn’t sound pleasant, does it? But think cottage cheese. We do eat it. Curdle? Curds? Yes. Cottage cheese is the closest thing we have to the process. By adding vinegar, citrus juice, rennet, milk changes. It doesn’t become immune to deterioration (unless it’s processed American Cheese), but it lasts a lot longer.  Cheese was a common European product and even now, cheese is rarely a part of Asian cuisines.  Europeans brought cheesemaking to the “New World”. Sorry Wisconsin, but the northeast colonies were the heart of cheese-making land long before you saw a Guernsey cow!  Cheese in some form was found around the world wherever dairy animals are kept. Africa, The Middle East, the Americas and certainly Europe.

The colonies of Rhode Island, Connecticut and Eastern Massachusetts were full of these European dairymen. The Cheese culture (ahem) spread to western Massachusetts, New York and into Ohio after the Revolutionary War. Parts of Ohio were considered the center of cheesemaking country! The dairy industry continued to spread west.

What’s farmer cheese? Take fresh milk (unpasteurized—in the old days this also meant straining out things you definitely didn’t want in your milk or cheese),and add rennet. Rennet is a product derived from a calf’s stomach. Today you can still buy rennet or you can use vinegar or lemon. In colonial times, rennet and warm milk would sit in large trays in the coolest part of the milk shed or kitchen, and begin to separate. Ask Miss Muffet about those curds and whey, will you? Colonial milkmaids helped the process along and eventually bagged up the curds to drain. Yes, this is where CHEESECLOTH came from, and they were left with curds. What drained off was the whey and it made a great basis for cooking and baking or drinking, just like buttermilk. 

In some cases the curds are pressed to further remove whey and create a more solid –yet soft—form of spreadable cheese. Farmer’s cheese is generally left as is or flavorings can be added. Chives, for instance.

The other cheeses we love are taken a step further. They are aged. There’s a science and an art to it. Think of all the cheeses you might eat in one day. Cream cheese, cheddar cheese, feta.  They’re all nothing without salt and a specialized aging process. Farmers with more time and competitiveness took those steps. Today, in the Finger Lakes area of New York State, we have a CHEESE TRAIL!

Most of us these days can think of at least ten types of cheese we use in our diet.  (Unless you are milk intolerant!) Have you ever made your own cheese?

The Three Sisters

Our earliest forefathers came to this land knowing nothing about how to survive here and bringing little with them. But they learned. Much of what they learned about food they learned from the natives. There were many new and strange plants here that the natives had been eating and cultivating for generations.

Corn was a staple for many tribes, as were beans and pumpkins. In fact, these three crops were grown together and called "The Three Sisters." They compliment each other on more than just the dinner table. 

Corn is a grass that grows on a sturdy frame and needs plenty of nitrogen to prosper. Beans are a legume, taking nitrogen from the air and depositing it into the soil. But beans need something to support them as they grow. Both corn and beans thrive best when their roots are kept modestly moist and partially shaded. Pumpkins have broad, prickly leaves that provide shade and also help repel certain pests, like raccoons, who do not like to walk over them. 

Learning how to work with nature to provide for their survival is what kept the early settlers alive. But it also change the world. Foods found native here, like The Three Sisters, were carried back across the ocean and cultivated there as well. And while many people think of potatoes belonging to the Irish, in fact, they were taken back to Ireland from our own Colonial shores.

~ Pegg Thomas



PeggThomas.com

Harvesting and Gathering

The Thomas Garden 2015

'Tis the season to harvest and gather and store away for the long winter months. While some of us still practice these traditions today, they were absolutely essential to our colonial ancestors. Without proper preparation, a disastrous winter may befall the family.

Maybe things were treated just as we treat them today. Potatoes, onions, carrots, rutabagas, and turnips were dug and stored. Root cellars were common, but without one, these crops could still be stored under the floorboards of a cabin or even in baskets along the wall away from the heat source.

Fruits could be sugared and cooked into preserves to be stored in crocks or jars. The tops of the crocks were sealed with wax or lard to prevent spoilage.

Certain vegetables could be salted and kept for most of the winter, like cabbages (sauerkraut), cucumbers (pickles), and green beans. These were combined with a salty brine and kept submerged in the brine in large crocks. Meats could also be brined for storage, salt pork being the most common, but also corned (pickled) beef or venison.

Drying fruits and vegetables was a common method for preservation. It required no crocks, brine, or sugar. One way was to string the fruits and vegetables on a thin twine with a sharp needle attached. Long strings of these foods could be hung in the attic or from the rafters and plucked off as needed. Depending on heat and humidity, they may take a month to fully dry out. Another method was to lay them out between two layers of cloth stretched in the full sun. The top cloth kept insects from getting in.

Naturally dried foods like beans and peas were gathered and kept in baskets or bags. Today we harvest our peas while they are tender and green, but in colonial times, they were allowed to dry in the shell. These would be shelled when they were needed and the husks fed to the livestock.

Herbs were generally harvested at their peak of freshness and tied into bundles then hung upside-down to dry. Herbs were used to flavor food, but many also served for medicinal purposes.

Next time you're tempted to complain about the price of food in the supermarket check-out line, take a minute and appreciate what your ancestors had to go through to collect that much food for their families.

~ Pegg Thomas