Milkweed as a Vegetable

 

Below is part of an excerpt from "The Forager's Harvest" written by Samuel Thayer. It fit in so well with the foraging post that I had to post it here.

"Milkweed season begins in late spring, just about the time that leaves are coming out on the oak trees, when the shoots come up near the dead stalks of last year’s plants. These resemble asparagus spears but have tiny leaves, in opposing pairs, pressed up flat against the stem. Until they are about eight inches tall, milkweed shoots make a delicious boiled vegetable. Their texture and flavor suggests a cross between green beans and asparagus, but it is distinct from either. As the plant grows taller, the bottom of the shoot becomes tough. Until it attains a height of about two feet, however, you can break off the top few inches (remove any large leaves) and use this portion like the shoot.

Milkweed flower buds first appear in early summer and can be harvested for about seven weeks. They look like miniature heads of broccoli but have roughly the same flavor as the shoots. These flower buds are wonderful in stir-fry, soup, rice, casseroles, and many other dishes. Just make sure to wash the bugs out.

In late summer milkweed plants produce the familiar pointed, okra-like seedpods which are popular in dried flower arrangements. These range from three to five inches long when mature – but for eating you want the immature pods. Select those that are no more than two thirds of their full size. It takes a little experience to learn the knack of how to tell if the pods are still immature, so as a beginner you might want to stick to using pods less than 1 ¾ inches in length to be safe. If the pods are immature, the silk and seeds inside will be soft and white without any hint of browning. It is good to occasionally use this test to verify that you are only choosing immature pods. If the pods are mature they will be tough and bitter. Milkweed pods are delicious in stew or just served as a boiled vegetable, perhaps with cheese or mixed with other veggies.

Silk refers to the immature milkweed floss, before it has become fibrous and cottony. This is perhaps the most unique food product that comes from the milkweed plant. When you consume the pod, you are eating the silk with it. At our house, we eat the smallest pods whole, but we pull the silk out of the larger (but still immature) pods. Open up the pod along the faint line that runs down the side, and the silk wad will pop out easily. If you pinch the silk hard, your thumbnail should go right through it, and you should be able to pull the wad of silk in half. The silk should be juicy; any toughness or dryness is an indicator that the pod is over mature. With time, you will be able to tell at a glance which pods are mature and which are not.

Milkweed silk is both delicious and amazing. It is slightly sweet with no overpowering flavor of any kind. Boil a large handful of these silk wads with a pot of rice or cous cous and the finished product will look like it contains melted mozzarella. The silk holds everything together, so it’s great in casseroles as well. It looks and acts so much like cheese, and tastes similar enough too, that people assume that it is cheese until I tell them otherwise. I have not yet run out of new ways to use milkweed silk in the kitchen – but I keep running out of the silk that I can for the winter!

With all of these uses, it is amazing that milkweed has not become a popular vegetable. The variety of products that it provides ensures a long season of harvest. It is easy to grow (or find) and a small patch can provide a substantial yield. Most importantly, milkweed is delicious. Unlike many foods that were widely eaten by Native Americans, European immigrants did not adopt milkweed into their household economy. We should correct that mistake.

You will find that some books on wild foods recommend boiling milkweed in multiple changes of water to eliminate the “bitterness.” This is not necessary for common milkweed Asclepias syriaca (which is the subject of this article, and the milkweed that most people are familiar with.) Common milkweed is not bitter.

I had no idea that milkweed was even edible! I am going to try them next spring, especially using the silks like cheese!

Hostas, A delicious Vegetable!

 

I have learned something new this year. Hostas are indeed edible and delicious! They are eaten regularly in Japan and other parts of the world. I have read that they taste just like asparagus, only better, with a very slight green onion flavour added in. 

These would be delicious in an omelet or a salad. They can be cooked gently, like you would asparagus, and eaten as a vegetable. The small leaf shoots and the flowers and stems are edible, cooked or raw. The flowers are sweeter with a flowery taste added in, similar to daylilies, also edible. 

I can't wait for my hostas to send up tender shoots to try! 

Nutritional Value

Hostas are rich in vitamin C. They can also boost resistance to disease, as they have polysaccharides that can increase the number of lymphocytes in the human body.

All hosta species are edible but H. montana and H. sieboldii are most popularly used for vegetables. H plantaginea is grown for its sweet flowers. 

More nutritional content (testing one leaf from 12 different varieties of hostas):

potassium (K) content ranged from 2.85 to 4.05%;

phosphorous content from 0.13 to 0.34%;

Calcium from 0.02 to 1.15%;

Magnesium from 540.00 to 794.12 ppm;

Manganese 26.93 to 133.77 ppm;

Zink 115.39 to 334.52 ppm;

Copper 1.78 to 5.95 ppm

Iron 26.43 to 251.95 ppm.

Making Your Own Cultered Buttermilk

 

Hubby loves buttermilk but buttermilk is expensive, unless you can find it on sale. With this in mind, I have been looking into making our own. I came caross a reference to homemade cultured buttermilk by accident about a month ago and that started the chain of research on the subject. Why should culturing bettermilk be difficult. I have been making yogurt for decades. Can this milk culture be any more difficult?

It isn't. Its easier. The culture that makes "cultured" buttermilk will grow at room temperature! That makes it a lot easier to make than yogurt. No warming the milk and keeping it at that warmer temp for eight hours.

This is not real buttermilk. Real buttermilk is what farmers pour off the butter after churning. This is, however, what most people drink from the grocery store, called "cultured" buttermilk. It is a mesophilic culture growing in milk. This is the same culture used to make many cheeses.

I bought a small container of cultered buttermilk at the store. It is important to buy one with live culture. Only a small portion of this is needed to turn a bowl of milk into cultured buttermilk. The process takes about 24 hours at room temperature.
I used storebought 2% milk and let a bowl of it warm to room temperature. I then added about a 2" square amount of buttermilk and left it for 24 hours.

Ta-da! Buttermilk! Thick and delicious!

 

You can freeze the buttermilk in small pieces, like in an ice cube tray, to use for baking. It is no longer suitable as starter for more buttermilk after it has been frozen. You won't want to drink it after freezing, either.

I don't have ice cube trays, so I put a piece of plastic wrap across the top of a tiny muffin pan and poured buttermilk into each one. I set this in the freezer. When they were hard I put them all in a freezer bag and put back in the freezer. Now I can take out as much as I need for a recipe.

Because we turn our heat down at night, our kitchen is a lot colder than "room temperature". For this reason I left it an extra half day. The next time I make it I will put it in the yogurt maker so the temperature will stay constant. My yogurt maker is a gallon tub in a styrofoam container made for it.

 

Freezing Spinach

 

This is the time of year when the spinach is plentiful. I plant a lot of it, as I like to add it to dips, soups, stews, lasagna, tomato sauce and plan to add it to dog food.

It can be chopped and frozen in water. The water is the important part. It will be good for cooking for months if chopped and frozen in water. Its not good for salad after it has been frozen, however. Just so you know.


You can chop it fine then put it into freezer bags, cover with water and freeze. I like to use ice cube trays for this so I can add the smaller amounts that I need for things.


I chop it very fine, then fill the ice cube trays with the dry chopped spinach. I then pour water into the trays until they are full and set them in the freezer.

Sometimes, in our freezer, it is hard to find a level surface on which to set several ice cube trays. I have to re-arrange the entire freezer first!

After they are frozen, take them out of the ice cube trays and empty into a large freezer bag. Seal and freeze. Then you can take them out as you need them.

Make Your Own Herbal Tea Bags

 

I have been growing, cutting, drying and rubbing my own herbs for years. The most time-consuming part is rubbing them and cleaning out all the tiny little stems. I have found a way to beat that, for the most part - herb bags, made from coffee filters! 

They are not just tea bags but culinary bags as well. I mix all my spaghetti/lasagna sauce herbs together in one bag. When I make sauce, I just toss in a bag or two. I don't have to spend hours rubbing the herbs to a fineness and picking out the little stems. I do this for soups and stew too. 

I have spent hours in front of movies in the evenings, rubbing and cleaning the culinary herbs, until I started making the bags. I never did that for the tea herbs until recently, as I strained the herbal tea anyway. They are so easy to make!

Today I am making feverfew tea bags so that my hubby can make himself a cup of feverfew tea when I am not available. We use feverfew for headaches and it works very well. It's not a pain reliever but will lift the pressure off almost immediately. It only works this well if it is fresh and pure. You can buy it at herbal stores but, like I said, the commercial mix doesn't do much for a headache. We are both very pleased by how well our own fresh, home grown works on migraines! 

It's easy to grow and very hardy. It is also a perennial and a beautiful addition to a flower bed.

I don't bother cleaning the tea herbs, as I said, so this dried feverfew is rough. I do take out the bigger stems but don't spend a lot of time on it.

I cut each filter into thirds and trim off the round edges. I then sew together three sides and leave the fourth side open to stuff in the herb.  Mine are square but you can make them round, as well. 

I use a simple in and out stitch, just enough to hold it together. You can do a much faster and neater job on a sewing machine, which you may want to do if you are going to be gifting these. Since they are only for our own use, this is good enough. 

We remove the bags from the tea with a spoon but you can sew a piece of string into one corner for handling. 

For medicinal herb tea, it is important to bring the water to a full boil, then let the tea steep for at least five minutes, ten is even better. I can usually only wait the five minutes when I have a migraine. I know how well it works. 

I brought a large pot of feverfew with me, to grow as we travel and camp. It is still doing well and surviving. When spring comes I will put it out in the sun where we are camping. 

Soon I will plant some purslane seeds and take a pot of that with me, as well!

Making Pizza

 

We LOVE pizza, especially homemade pizza. I have a good recipe for the dough that makes in my breadmaker. Well, it makes up to the "roll it out" stage. This dough recipe uses a cup of beer for the liquid which gives the dough an especially "yeasty" flavour that is really delicioius! It can be flat so you can save a cup of beer in the fridge for awhile, planning to make your own pizza dough.You can put as much cheese as you want on your own pizza. You can put whatever toppings you like and as much of them as you want, on your own pizza. It is more trouble than buying delivered pizza but it is a LOT cheaper. It is more trouble than buying a frozen pizza from the grocery store, but it is a LOT better.You don't have to use a breadmaker for this, its just easier. I let the dough mix and knead in the breadmaker. If you are using a breadmaker for this and are putting the ingredients in early in the morning to mix and knead later, or even the day before, it is important that the ingredients be put into your breadmaker in this order. This keeps the yeast away from the liquid, salt and sugar until it is ready to mix.

This is the pizza dough recipe we use:

1 cup beer or water (Use beer. It makes delicious crust!)
1 tablespoon shortening
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 3/4 cups all purpose flour in Canada
or 3 cups bread flour in the US (I have no idea?? - anyone??)
1 1/4 teaspoon yeastPut all ingredients into machine in the above order. Put machine on "dough/pasta" setting. When cycle is complete, remove dough and roll out to fit bottom of pan.

This recipe makes one extra large pizza or two small pizzas. I always make one extra large one.

I have a pizza stone, but I bake this in a pizza pan with bacon grease in the bottom. You can put melted butter in it instead, for a crispy crust, but we like it in bacon grease. I know, bacon grease is not healthy. Pizza is not "healthy". If you are eating pizza, with cheese and sausage anyway, you might as well add the bacon grease too. Walk it off :-)

While the dough is kneading in the machine, you can be gathering and chopping all the toppings. We use grated mozarella cheese, green peppers, onions, mushrooms, tomatoes, bacon and sausage (no pepperoni).


I dry the very thin tomato slices between paper towel so they don't add more water to the pizza and I like to cook the onions and peppers in the bacon grease slightly so they are not crunchy on the pizza.

I used Italian sausage for this pizza because that is what I had, slicing them thinly before putting on the pizza. These were left over from two days ago. I prefer spicy breakfast sausage, myself. Because this is mild Italian sausage, I sprinkled a little black pepper on it before baking and some thyme, as well. I like to add thyme to everything I cook because of its antibacterial properties.



I love Hawaiian pizza with bacon, mushroom, pineapple, ham and COCONUT on it. Delicious!!

After the dough gets rolled out and put into the pan, I add the sauce. Spread it out over the dough, leaving an edge around the outside that is uncovered. After the sauce is spread on, add about 3/4 of the grated cheese.

Be careful not to overload the center of the pizza with cheese and toppings or it will take too long to bake, not getting done before the bottom is too brown. Most of the cheese and toppings go aroung the outside of the center, leaving the outside edge clear, as with the sauce.

After the cheese, I add the other toppings evenly spread over the pizza, topping it all off with the rest of the grated cheese and a little finely grated parmesan.

The pizza needs to be baked at exactly 400 degrees F. Your stove should be calibrated so you can be sure of the temperature. At least put in a stove thermometer and see if it is off. That way you can adjust the setting to get exactly the temperature you need.

Bake the pizza for exactly 20 minutes. One minute longer and the bottom will be a bit too dark. If you don't bake it long enough, the center will not be completely cooked and will be soggy.

After the pizza has baked for 12 minutes, put a ring around the outside crust area. We use this one that hubby made many years ago from another flat pizza pan. An aluminum foil collar will also work.






Remove pizza from the oven when the 20 minutes is up. If the center is soggy and not well done, you can turn the oven to broil and put the pizza in to broil for another few minutes. Leave the oven door open to prevent further baking of the bottom of the crust while broiling the top.

Remove the ring around the ege and let it cool a bit before you cut and eat it.

This crust is fabulous, especially made with the beer and not overdone. Watch the time and temp closely. It is easy to overcook the bottom.

I suppose one could freeze the other half of the bottle of beer in another container for use at a later date or make another batch of pizza dough and freeze it (if one doesn't drink beer, that is).

Muffins for Christmas

 

This year I have decided to give my inlaws muffins for Christmas. They are elderly and it's just the two of them so she doesn't bake much anymore. They still enjoy baked goods, especially muffins, so I am giving them nine muffins from each of my very best muffin recipes. I baked them all just this week so they would be fresh. I frose them as soon as they were cool to keep them fresh. I took them out of the freezer this morning and they will get them tomorrow so they will be well thawed.

I made carrot/raisin, sour cream blueberry, banana and squash/pumpkin. The recipes are below. They refreeze well. None of these muffins are low-cal and all are made with real food, real butter, milk, eggs and sugar. (One loaf of white Wonderbread lasts for three weeks in the cupboard at room temp without molding! At first I said "Great!". Now I say, "Wait a minute. Is that real food?". Uh, no.)


I baked carrot-raisin-sunflower seeds (pictures here). This is the most delicious, moist, dense carrot muffin I have ever eaten. It's delicious and has a lot of texture and carrot in it.






Here are the recipes:

Carrot Raisin Muffins

3 cups grated carrot
4 large eggs
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/4 cups oil
1 cup golden raisins
1 1/2 cups sunflower seeds or nuts

Directions: Preheat oven to 300F. You will need 3 large bowls for this recipe.
Bowl #1: Mix grated carrot, seeds and raisins
Bowl #2: Mix flour, soda, salt and cinnamon
Bowl #3: Mix sugar and oil. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing for 30 seconds after each one. Add flour mixture to this and stir only until well blended. Add carrot mix and fold in gently. Fill greased muffin tin or papers 2/3 full. Bake 20-22 mins for very large muffins. Insert a toothpick into the center of the largest one to test for doneness. If it comes out dry and clean, the muffins are done.

Blueberry Sour Cream Muffins

2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup oil
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teasppon baking powder
1 cup sour cream
1 cup blueberries

Directions: Beat eggs, gradually add sugar. While beating, slowly add oil and vanilla. Combine dry ingredients in a separate bowl. Add alternately with sour cream to the egg. Gently fold in blueberries. Bake in preheated oven at 400F for 18-20 mins in muffins papers or greased pan for very large muffins. Insert a toothpick into the center of the largest one to test for doneness. If it comes out dry and clean, the muffins are done.


Banana Muffins

2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup white sugar
2 cups mashed bananas, very ripe (4-5 lg bananas)
1 cup mayonnaise

Directions: Mix first 4 ingredients together well. Fold in bananas and mayonnaise. Bake at 350F for 12-14 mins in muffins papers or greased pan for very large muffins. Insert a toothpick into the center of the largest one to test for doneness. If it comes out dry and clean, the muffins are done.


Pumpkin Muffins

1 cup cooked squash or pumpkin
1/3 cup oil
1/4 cup corn syrup
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon mace

Directions: Preheat oven to 350F. Mix together pumpkin, eggs, oil and corn syrup in large bowl. Stir until well mixed. Stir all other dry ingredients together in another bowl. Add dry ingredients to squash mixture. Fill greased tins or papers to the top. Bake in preheated oven for 20-15 minutes until tightly brown on top very large muffins. Insert a toothpick into the center of the largest one to test for doneness. If it comes out dry and clean, the muffins are done.