Eating healthy is free and easy when springtime brings the wild plants back to life! Come on in and see what's going into my salads here in Oregon's Willamette Valley. What's in your salad?
Wild Salads Are Incredible Salads!
I enjoy eating wild plants any time of year. I even challenge myself every year to find fresh greens for an end-of-the-year salad. But the wild salads of springtime are some of the best wild eating there is!
In my yard, spring has started early -- way too early -- a whole month early. But that means I'll be enjoying incredible salads, mostly for free, for the next few months. Into June, at least.
The plants are listed, by number, at the end of this post. That way, you can use this post to test your plant identification skills! Maybe you have some of these plants growing around you. They are waiting for you to get to know them! Do you already know or eat some of these plants?
With wild and homegrown ingredients, my salads are different every time. It all depends on what I have at hand. How do you decide what goes in your salads?
If you follow my posts for @lenasveganliving's great FruitsAndVeggies Contest and @woman-onthe-wing's new MakeItHealthy project, you will see my wild salad ingredients change over the coming months. If you want to know more about a specific plant, let me know, and I'll write posts about that specific plant -- like this one on English Daisies.
Tips for Making A Great Wild Salad
When I'm picking, I make a real effort to Pick Clean and Pick Organized. It's so much easier in the kitchen to see if I've gotten parts of any other plants that I don't want to eat. And to see any plant parts that aren't good quality.
Then I mix all the plants together and wash them well! Late winter and early spring wild plants can have a lot of grit and mud. Because there's more bare ground to splash up on the low-growing plants. That's OK -- I just soak and swish them in a big bowl. And then pat dry with a towel.
I think weed salads taste best when the plants are chopped up really fine. It mixes all the flavors - and keeps the texture, hairiness, or strong flavors of some plants from being noticeable. I don't put much effort into balancing flavors. I just pick a mix and chop fine. I've never had a bad weed salad this way. Every one has been delicious!
Wild Spring Salads Are Full of Life!
Wild salads in the early spring are tender! Even without knowing the nutrition details of each wild plant, it's clear that they are healthy. Most wild greens have even more nutrients than garden vegetables. I always feel better when I eat these salads.
I tossed my chopped greens with an olive oil-balsamic vinegar mix - and homemade raisins from my homegrown green seedless grapes. I keep some of the flowers to put on top. I put more raisins on top -- and pieces of Coconut-Herb-Black Pepper Chao. That's a vegan fake cheese that's delicious!
The Chao cheese is made by the Field Roast Grain Meat Co. in Seattle, Washington. The "Chao" part is a fermented Chao tofu. It has a mild coconut flavor with the spark of black peppercorns. Very good! Even people that like regular cheese like this vegan Chao cheese!
This salad was delicious with this smooth 8.21 Lunar Lager, made just for last summer's Total Solar Eclipse by a local brewery. I decided to enjoy it in celebration of the recent Super Blue Blood Moon's lunar eclipse. If you like beer, here's my review, complete with solar and lunar eclipse pictures. And here are posts about my canoe trip to see the eclipse - part 1. part 2.
I appreciate being able to grow or find so much of my food. Are you harvesting any plants from your garden or growing wild this time of year? Would you eat my wild spring salad?
Plant List - And Foraging Quiz Answers
- Nipplewort - Lapsana communis - tender young leaves
- Hedge mustard – Sisymbrium officinale - young leaves
- Elephant garlic - Allium ampeloprasum - young leaves
- Field mustard – Brassica rapa – flowerbuds and tender leaves
- English daisy – Bellis perennis – leaves and flowers
- Bittercress - Cardamine hirsuta - tender leaves, stems, and flowerheads
- Spearmint - Mentha spicata - leaves
- Curly Dock – Rumex crispus – young leaves
- Dandelion – Taraxacum officinale – leaves and flowers
- Wild arugula - Diplotaxis tenuifolia - leaves
- Narrowleaf plantain - Plantago lanceolata - tender young leaves
- Cats ear - Hypochaeris radicata - young leaves
- Wild chives - Allium vineale - young leaves
- Chickweed - Stellaria media - leaves, stems, flowers
- Purple deadnettle - Lamium purpureum - leaves, stems, flowerheads before seeds
- Cleavers - Galium aparine - tender leaves and stems
Which ones did you get right? Which ones caused trouble? I want to help you enjoy the bounty of all the incredible wild plants around us!
Here are some of my other Wild Salad posts: Free Hotel Salad - Wild Style! // Another Free Hotel Salad - Wild Style! // Wild, Wild Salad - 19 wild plants // Grilled Beets Wild Style with Spruce Tree Balsamic Vinegar, Mallow "Cheesewheels", and Strong Greens // Savory Pumpkin Custard on a Bed of Baby Wild Greens with Black Nightshade and Spruce Tree Dressing // Salads from Weeds, Tree Leaves, Flowers, and Seeds // Wild Homestead Extravaganza Salad - 25 wild plants and Shaggy Parasol mushrooms // Paleo Winter Weed Salad - 15 wild plants // Another Paleo Winter Weed Salad - 15 wild plants // Wild Weed Salad - 16 wild plants //
I eat a lot of wild plants and show you how, because I believe that we can all have lives that are richer, more secure, more grounded, and more interesting by getting to know the plants and the land around us – in our yards, our parks, and our wild places.
If you found this post interesting or helpful, I'd appreciate your upvote! Happy healthy eating! And happy foraging!
Haphazard Homestead
foraging, gardening, nature, simple living close to the land
All content is 100% Haphazard Homestead!My YouTube channel: Haphazard Homestead
CONGRATULATIONS TO YOU! A WELL-EARNED AWARD!
Thanks, @lenasveganliving! What a nice surprise! I don't have to do much -- just enjoy the outdoors and then make a salad, lol. The plants do all the real work! It would be nice if everyone could enjoy such good eating! Thanks for running your FruitsandVeggies Monday! :D
You are most welcome Dear @haphazard-hstead and I hope you are ready to be the HONORABLE GUEST JUDGE next week. Please contact me via my blog Thank you 🌸💖🌸
Oh my! I'm glad you said something! I'll definitely get ready!
Just doing my job, lol................thank you so much my Dear, I really appreciate it 🌿💙🌿
Ive got all the snow you can either eat or drink!
haha -- that's Michigan, alright! You can make snow ice cream, or snow cones! Or make a snowball, put it in the freezer until it sets up well -- then use it for your ice in a cocktail! :D
WOW! You have so many green plants in your garden! Very beautiful salad.... I like your idea in using the yellow flower, this can make the dish more colorful! Um! But, as you know me well, I think, it's too green for me! ;D
haha -- yes, too green for you, @tangmo! You have to wait until I have watermelon in my garden, lol. These plants are not even in my garden. They are growing on their own in my yard. I don't have to do anything except pick them. More people could eat these same plants, if they would not mow their grass so much.
Ha ha! OKAY! I'm looking forward to seeing watermelon in your garden very soon. ;)
Ah! I think, even though, they don't mow their grass, they may not know that these plants can be eaten....., but you know the plants very well! That's very great of you! ;))
Hello Friend @haphazard-hstead! Today the world celebrates Love Day and romance!
I wish you had a day of love every day!
Happy Valentine's Day, @olga.maslievich! It looks like you know how to celebrate the day perfectly! :D
It looks just so healthy and delicious at the same time! Thanks for the quiz too, I had a couple of these plants right :) I love how you promote this combination of healhty eating and better understanding of the planet´s flora :) Keep posts like this one coming! :)
Good for you in already knowing some of the plants! It's amazing how many really tasty and nutritious wild plants there are, all around us. It changes all through the year and from place to place, but that's part of the fun of it! Enjoy your wild plants! :D
Hmm dandelions.. used to add the greens to my smoothies when we lived in Belgium! And the flowers work amazingly against nettle stings.
Yay! Another fan of the dandelions! Putting them in smoothies is a great way to appreciate them! I didn't know that about the flowers. I might run some nettle experiments this spring, lol. :D
Yep takes away to burning itch. At least it helped for me... hope it wasn't all in my head. My dad always made things better with dandelions when I was a small kid and went picking nettles with him in the forest. Ohh btw we have some mushrooms growing in the garden right now.... not sure if you can eat them... they don't look too tasty hehe. They turn black very fast it seems!
Those mushrooms are so cool, @amy-goodrich! They look like a Bolete, with that sponge underneath the cap. But there are a lot of different Boletes, lol. Some incredibly delicious and others that nobody should be eating. It would be fun to key those out, but who knows what are the tropical boletes - not me! But boletes are so cool just to look at and good for your soil and plants!
Going back to Khmer lesson and hopefully, we get better in the language so we can go on foraging trips with the locals and learn about what to eat and especially what not to eat. Have a great day!
Wow! It's really lovely and interesting about wild plants @haphazard-hstead. It's really delicious and yummy greeny wild salad. I really imoressed by your wild plants foods and your wonderful garden. You are very lucky to have healthy and fresh foods whenever you wants.
Thanks for sharing your wondeful wild plant's recipes with us.
I'm glad you enjoyed my wild weed salad, @anayakhan! There are so many good wild plants to eat. It takes some time to get to know them well enough to eat them. But then, it's like having a market all around, all the time. I wonder what good plants are around you! :D
I just wish I could dive in in your bowl with my fork Dear @haphazard-hstead. It looks and sounds super delicious not to mention super healthy.
I am bookmarking this, because I will be standing the list of all the plants you listed. I may find some in the neighborhood trail, so I am planning to do some search soon as the spring arrives. Atough it will take a while. You are so lucky having spring already........must be nice.
Thnak you so much for joining us again and I look froward to your next wild specialty 🍒 🍌🍑🌿🍍🍓🍇
PS: I will upvote tomorrow, since my vote power needs recovery. It's been very busy day, lol.
Dive on into my wild salad, @lenasveganliving! I think you would like it a lot! So many of these plants are in your part of Ontario, too. But I think your spring can turn into summer much faster. A good way to start, even before winter ends, is to learn some of your local trees. Some of them have leaves, needles, or flowers that are good in spring salads. And once you find some trees to eat, it's easy to go back there, year after year. Because the trees stay in one place, lol, compared to many weeds!
That is so true, lol. Thank you so much for the advise my Dear, I will definitely look into it 🌸💖🌸
Dang! That salad looks awesome! Not only good for you but is beautiful. Nicely done.
Thanks, @tesscooks4u! It's almost too easy. I don't have to grow any of it. Or buy it. I just have to wander around and pick it, lol. Spring makes for some easy living and tasty eating! It's the Salad Days, lol! :D
Wow, your knowledge about all these wild plants always amazed me. Thank you for listing the plants by numbers and mentioning their names. I'm sure going to find out these wild plants. BTW, your salad looks great.
Glad you enjoyed my wild weed salad, @kittynick! I wonder what sort of plants grow around you. We are in very different regions, I think. I bet you have some good weeds for eating, too. Maybe you have Amaranth (Amaranthus spp.) or Purslane (Portulaca spp.) around. I don't see them here until it gets hot in the summer. Enjoy your salads, too! :D
Yes, miles apart ;)
Yeah, we have amaranth around us, their seeds used to make flour (in our language we rajgira flour) which we used to make pastas and baked other goods, and their leaves used to make a dish called cholai ka saag. We eat purslane with fenugreek leaves and spinach and it tastes delicious.