Into the Wild: These delicacies took some getting used to

Carol W. Kimball

Eating wild foods
weed-eaters

Kim11-062

Scrapbook

8: Communication Artifact

Documentary Artifact

The Day

New London, CT

12/3/2007

Carol W. Kimball

Carol Kimball was surprised to her new husband, Burton Kimball, and his family ate weeds. They ate milkweed, skoke, cowslips and even stinging nettles. Even Carol's parents ate dandelions. A mess of dandelions was believed to be as good a tonic for spring fever as a dose of sulphur and molasses. The dandelion greens were washed and cooked with a bit of salt pork. The tastiest dandelion greens had to be harvested before their yellow blossoms appeared. Later in the season the leaves were too bitter. On the other hand, there were those who gathered the yellow blossoms to make dandelion wine, said to be a great delicacy. The Kimballs also ate cowslips. The yellow blossoms were cooked and eaten along with the dark green leaves. Milkweed was gathered as young shoots in spring with claims that when cooked and a little butter added, they tasted like asparagus. Stinging nettles are a vicious plant with tiny hairs along its leaves that sting the flesh. Young and tender ones would be harvested with gloved hands and they would wilt down as they cooked. The Kimballs claimed that nettles thus prepared caused no harm to the mouth or tongue. Stoke, sometimes called poke or pokeberry, with only the young unfolding leaves, were cooked and eaten. Purslane, portulaca oleracea, a flat plant found in the edge of the lawn can be cooked or eaten raw in salads. Euell Gibbons made a splash in the weed-eating world with his best selling book, Stalking the Wild Asparagus, in 1962. Gibbons held that man could live solely on the bounties of nature and gave tips about wild food gathering and recipes, but he never mentions eating nettles!

Kimball, Burton
Gibbons, Euell

milkweed
dandelions
purslane
cowslips
poke
pigweed
Jerusalem artichokes
dock
nettles
book
Stalking the Wild Asparagus
weed-eaters