STEEMIT CULINARY CHALLENGE #3 : Homestead Smoothie - 100% free - weeds, flowers, fruit, and seeds - with foraging ID quiz
I sure appreciate my homestead. I can make a great-tasting, nutritious smoothie in less than 15 minutes - completely for free. But every smoothie is different, depending on the season. Here's how I made a wonderful smoothie on Saturday, November 12, 2016.
Step 1. Take a walk around the homestead
I took all the photos first, because that takes a lot longer than actually picking everything. Here are three collages with the plants I picked. Many of these plants grow in many parts of the world as weeds or garden escape artists. I pick clean, so there aren't other weeds mixed in. And I keep my picking organized, so it's easier in the kitchen to double-check that I have only the plants I want.
Clockwise, from upper left: Chickweed, dandelion greens, cats-ear, common mallow.
Clockwise, from upper left: Lambsquarter seeds, dandelion flower, black nightshade, Concord grapes.
Clockwise, from upper left: Hollyhock flower, borage flower, lemon balm, spearmint.
Step 2. Bring the harvest back to the kitchen
In the kitchen, I sort my plants and check that I only have the ones I want. Then, I take off the parts of any that I don't want to use. For example, I only use the flower petals of the hollyhock and dandelion. I remove the stems from the black nightshade. I also added two kinds of apples and Asian pear that I had already harvested earlier in the fall.
Then I cut and cored the fruit, added it to the flowers and greens, and rinsed them off in a big bowl of water. I took the grapes off their stems, but left the seeds in. I rinsed the lambsquarter seeds and black nightshade fruit in a separate small cup, so they wouldn't get lost in the big bowl.
Use this picture and the plant list below as a quiz. Can you identify each of the plants I used in my smoothie?
Step 3. Blend it up!
This isn't a hard step. I just put all the plants from the bowl and cup into the blender. I start with only a little water and keep adding more until I get a smoothie consistency. For the amount of plants I used, I filled my 5-cup blender almost to the top.
I don't use any special blender. The one I have is from the 1970s and it works fine. The trick is to put the blender on liquify and let it go for 4 or 5 minutes. Don't try to rush it. Let it churn!
That's all. Then, just pour it out and drink up! It's not fancy, but boy, it's tasty, fresh, healthy, filling, and free. What more can you ask?
Plant List
- Lemon balm – Melissa officinalis - it lasts from spring through fall
- Borage flowers - Borago officinalis - flowering until frost, as usual
- Cats-ear - Hypochaeris radicata - the new fall leaves are tender and mild
- Hollyhock flowers - Alcea rosea - they self-seed like a weed and bloom until frost
- Common mallow - Malva neglecta - leaves - a summer holdover, but reinvigorated by autumn
- Dandelion flowers – Taraxacum officinale – flowers that are around spring through fall
- Black nightshade - Solanum nigrum - it will flower and set fruit until frost, only the ripe black fruit are good
- Dandelion greens – Taraxacum officinale – the new fall leaves are tender and mild
- Chickweed - Stellaria media - from fall through spring
- Large Korean Pear - Pyrus pyrifolia - ripe in mid-fall and keep for months in refrigeration
- Concord grapes - Vitis labrusca - late summer to late fall
- Lambsquarter seeds - Chenopodium album - seeds from late summer into winter
- Apples - Malus pumila - yellow delicious and Braeburn - ripe in mid-fall and keep for months in refrigeration
- Spearmint - Mentha spicata - it lasts from spring through fall
What Do You Think?
Do you put any weeds in your smoothies? How about flowers or herbs? How did you do on the plant quiz? Are there any of those plants that you want to know more about?
If you have any thoughts about foraging, or experiences to share, write a post a be sure to use the Foraging tag. See what other folks are foraging by following the @foraging-trail, where all posts are SteemTrail-curated. Happy Foraging!
** Haphazard Homestead **
*** foraging, gardening, nature, simple living close to the land ***
All content is 100% Haphazard Homestead - photos and all!
I participate in Operation Translation. All my posts are available for translation under the rules listed on the linked post from @papa-pepper. Logo provided by @oepc85. Post goes 100% to Steem Power! Logo provided by @merej99
*** foraging, gardening, nature, simple living close to the land ***
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Excellent post my friend @ haphazard-hstead, thanks for the recipes and the list of ingredients
Thank you very much for your comments and questions, to understand our culture of the yeba and the mate I leave this link here you will see the ceremony of the mate.
https://steemit.com/life/@jlufer/popular-culture-the-infusion-of-my-land-the-mate
That's a great post, @jlufer! Thanks for letting me know about it. I'm sure I miss so many good things here on Steemit.
that looks really good!
Thanks! It's hard to go wrong with fresh greens and fruit. I don't ever use leaves from the wild onion family, though, like wild chives or garlic, lol. Other than that, they are never the same, but they are always good!
A really quality post @haphazard-hstead. The quality of the photographs and the information is tip top !!! I mentioned foraging to my lovely lady and she told me..."Not while there is a supermarket down the road!!!"...LOL.
I reckon you would get fat around our little province here in South Africa... the climate means all year round abundance of weeds and garden escape artists.
Thanks, @themagus. I'm glad you enjoyed my post. I laughed at your lady's comment. To me, I would much rather casually walk around my yard than go to the busy supermarket. It takes a lot less time, I get to enjoy my yard, I don't have to deal with any traffic or crowds at the store, I get the freshest food, and it's all free. I wonder how many weeds we have in common between South Africa and the US Pacific Northwest. So many of our edible weeds were brought in by European settlers and those plants are all over the world. I hope you get to enjoy your weedy abundance some time!
I recognise borage, dandelions, aragula (we call it Wild Rocket), definitely lemon balm ..... I will take some photo's and do a blog and tag you in it and you can see if you can help me identify them (cross referenced with the American name)
You've got he makings of a good salad or smoothie there! I'll look forward to your post!
@haphazard-hstead sorry for the late notice, I checked for other entries early this morning and I saw yours but I couldn't log in but this entry made it on time so - acknowledged!
Good luck!
Thanks! I'm glad I made the deadline. I do like making these sorts of smoothies.
@haphazard-hstead since am not the judge this week - this won't have any influence on your post - I tried guessing the ingredients before getting at the bottom - when I was reading it this morning and this is as far as I got
-1- mint/ catmint?
-2 borage
-3 not clear :(
-4 mallow?
-5 mallow leaves
-6 dandelion flowers
-7 black currant?
-8 dandelion leaves
-9 beats me :D
-10 Korean pear
-11 wild grapes/ black grapes
-12 chia seeds?/ sesame seeds? whaaat?
-13 yellow - apple/ granny smith?
-13 red - fuji apple?
-14 peppermint
That was pretty good! Sorry that number 3 wasn't so clear in the photo. Hollyhock is in the same family as mallow, although not in the same genus. Close enough. The black nightshade is related to tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, and eggplants.
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What a wonderful 'green' smoothie - really healthy and bet it tastes scrummy
would be really interested to know what 'wild' foods are good for smoothies ie what some people call 'weeds' but can actually be used. Not much available for me at the moment in Egypt, but when I get back to greenfields and gardens it would a good reference to have.
great share and pics are awesome
Thanks, it really was tasty. I've never had any homestead smoothie that was less than delicious, though. I just mix fruit, greens, flowers, and water. The spearmint is a sure winner and I don't ever include garlic leaves, lol. I've got some past smoothies that I've made with other weeds that I'll post, I think.
I put weeds in my smoothies!
And I bet you can do that all year long, too. Your winter's there in Arkansas aren't too bad. Even if the ground freezes, after even a few days of sun, you can probably find a few things in sunny, protected areas. Weeds! Gotta love 'em -- and put them in smoothies! :D
Oh yeah, free wild food and smoothies!!!!!
Outstanding!!! I love your post haphazard-hstead.
13 ingredients all produced and harvested by your own hands with beautiful pictures to educate us all. Well done!
Thanks so much, @rebeccaryan! Many of those weeds and wild foods we can't buy at any price, but we can pick all we want for free. Once we learn to appreciate some of these plants, it's amazing to see how much food is really out there, waiting for us.
Exactly! I am very interested in learning to forage beyond picking wild berries and tree fruit. It's definitely a valuable skill that I greatly admire. I can see your posts evolving into a whole book. I think you already have many chapters complete just in the few excellent posts of yours that I have read so far. Thanks for sharing the information that is in your head with all of us. I greatly appreciate it.
Thanks for those kinds words and encouragement. I do eat a lot of weeds and other wild plants. If you already know some of the wild berries and tree fruit, really solid, you have a great head-start. Not all of them, but many, have other parts that are edible, too. So you increase the size of your wild grocery store really fast.
If you ever make a post about harvesting or using any of the wild berries or fruit that you know, if you add the Foraging tag to your posts, it will be easier for me to find it and consider it for the SteemTrail @foraging-trail curation. You can find out more here and here.
Thank you very much.
Awesome! Thanks for the inspiration! My growing season in the mountains of Colorado is shorter than yours - many of these plants have come and gone, but I still harvested some slightly frost-bitten wilted dandelion yesterday. What part of the world do you live in? Hawaii? :)
Glad you enjoyed this. I am in Oregon's Willamette Valley in the US Pacific Northwest. We typically have frost by now, but not this year. So, I'm taking advantage of the extended season. We can have "real winter", with frozen ground. But even with a few days of mild weather, I can find good weeds to eat by looking in protected microclimates, especially if we get some sunshine.