Wild Spring Plant Foods: The Foxfire Americana Library (7) by Edited by Foxfire Students Read Free Book Online

dandelion roots. Peel. Roast until dark brown; grind. Use as substitute for real coffee.
    Dandelion wine: pour one gallon boiling water over one gallon dandelion flowers. Let stand until blossoms rise (twenty-four to forty-eight hours). Strain into stone jar. Add juices of four lemons and four oranges, and four pounds of sugar, plus one yeast cake. Stir four or five times a day until it stops fermenting. Keep well covered. In two weeks, strain, bottle and cork tightly.
    Tall coneflower
(Rudbeckia laciniata)
(family
Compositae
)
(cochan, coach-ann)
    Tall coneflower grows in wet places, with finely dissected, smooth green leaves, and later in the season, tall stems of yellow, daisy-like flower heads with green, cone-shaped centers. This is a close relative of the brown-eyed susan, and the wild ancestor of the garden golden globe.
    Leaves are edible when young and tender. Mrs. Ethel Corn told us, “You find it along branch banks. It looks like golden globe flowers, and it will run up when it goes to seed. You have to watch when picking it, for the wild parsnip looks similar to it, only it’s more whitish-leaved than that.”
    Mrs. Hershel Keener said, “There’s a plant that grows along this branch called coachie-ann; now I don’t know how you spell it, and it’s got such an odor when it’s cooking. You can boil it just like you do poke, and season it real good, but I don’t like it.”
    Greens: pick when tender and parboil until tender. Wash until water is clear, squeeze water out. Put in pan with grease and fry.Or after cooking, chop fine and add salt and margarine and top with chopped boiled eggs.

    I LLUSTRATION 38 Kenny Runion with cochan from a neighbor’s cornfield.
RECIPES FOR MIXED GREENS
    Many different kinds of greens can be combined in salads, or in recipes for cooked greens. Any mild-flavored green can be combined with the sharper tasting mustards and cresses, and add bulk.
    Mixed greens:
    Get together a mess of poke, dandelion, lamb’s quarters, violet leaves, and sour dock, and mix together. Cook, drain, and season with bits of fried salt pork, and a little vinegar.
      (or)
    “When I was small, my people used to pick wild mustard, narrow-leaf dock, and lamb’s quarters. Mix it all together and fry in grease,” says Mrs. Al Webster.
      (or)
    Parboil poke, then cook with ham hock like turnip greens. Dandelions are done the same way. Thistle, wild lettuce, whiteweed, narrow- and broad-leafed dock, pussley, wild violet leaves, wild mustard are all cooked like turnip or mustard greens.
    Canned greens:
    Most wild sallets can be canned. Mix mustard and wild turnip greens, or buff sallet and mustard mixed, or with creases. Fix and precook until tender. Put in jars, add water, seal, and cook thirty minutes in pressure cooker.
    Mixed green salad:
    Take equal parts of dandelion, shepherd’s purse, peppergrass, curly dock, poke shoots, and sorrel. Chop fine. Add wild onion to taste. (Poke shoots must be cooked first.) Make a dressing of oil and vinegar, and flavor with garlic, mustard, salt, and pepper. Serve on a bed of wild dock or lettuce leaves.
      (or)
    Toss one cup chopped cress, one cup chopped dandelion, one-fourth cup ramps or wild onions together with French dressing.
      (or)
    Three slices bacon, cut fine. Three tablespoons vinegar, dash of salt, one cup chopped cress, one cup dandelions, one cup wild lettuce. Fry bacon, add vinegar and salt, pour over greens, and toss.
      (or)
    Mix water cress, sorrel, purslane, wild onion, and dandelion leaves, chopped fine. Fry bacon bits, pour bacon bits, grease, and vinegar over greens.
      (or)
    Wash chopped sorrel, sour dock, dandelion. Put in pan with diced onions or ramps, pour dressing of vinegar, sugar, salt, pepper, and bacon over greens, and toss.
    Wild strawberry
(Fragaria virginiana)
(family
Rosaceae
)
    I LLUSTRATION 39 Wild strawberries
    Wild strawberries grow in colonies, or beds, in open, sunny places, in old fields, along roadsides, or damp