Backyard Foraging: Nasturtiums

Special guest blogger Carol Emert talks about nasturtiums!

April 2020

Nasturtiums have been growing in wild abundance in my backyard for years, but I’ve never taken full advantage of them until Covid-19 started gobsmacking my usual notions about our food supply.

As the Bay Area’s incidence curve climbs, my family’s Trader Joe’s habit has come to a screeching halt. Instead, we’re sequestered at home, thinking a lot about minimizing waste and doing more with what exists within the bounds of our house and gardens in Oakland, California.

For this morning’s omelet, I found myself with none of the traditional cooking greens and had no choice but to put nasturtium greens to the test. I’ve long used nasturtium flowers as garnish, and occasionally added the greens as a flavorful supplement to salad. But I’d always considered nasturtiums an intense, peppery novelty -- not a vegetable.

Thoughts & Dandelions

Many of us will be hit hard by the fallout from the virus:

Particularly people whose roles involve "being there" and/or physical touch. This includes all of the communities I've become part of over the last 15 years.

Wellness practitioners and trainers of all sorts. Food producers and musicians and other performers. People in hospitality and travel and activity.

It is vital that the emerging florescence of consciousness, connection, and community driven by all these folks not be allowed to wilt, and that we find a way to weather the storm and grow from it in whatever way we can.

Having said that:

It's more important than ever that each of us think about our relationship to the food supply.

Straight to the mundane and actionable:

Do you have some outdoor space? Are you unsure how best to use it to produce food?

If you can't decide, I have a suggestion: grow dandelions.

Maybe you're already doing this. They pretty much grow themselves.

You can eat them. You can eat the leaves. You can eat the stems. You can eat the flowers (although ideally you won't pick them until they've seeded). You can use the roots.

You can read elsewhere about why dandelions are good for you--good for your liver, antioxidants, nutrient-dense, trace minerals, good for digestion, etc.

You can also find elsewhere lovely-sounding recipes for fermented dandelions with allspice and coriander that involve cooking a delicious brine, letting it cool, etc.

My goal, as usual, is to keep it simple, and to avoid being "extra".

So I followed my standard routine:

Weigh vegetables in grams. Add 2% salt by weight. Massage and stuff in jar.

I did this with the leaves and put them in one jar. I did it with the stems and put them in another.

I'll let you know how it goes.