Eating the Wild World

The main thing I remember about Euell Gibbons is the joke about his having purple testicles from eating grapenuts. Now I wish I'd paid more attention to what he was actually saying..... I've been reading & rereading some of the books in the KSF library about uses of native plants; it looks as if we could be enjoying huge wild meals, including grains & greens, of course, but also wild rye & oat & barley & wheat flour.... there're simple directions for winnowing & roasting & grinding; Charlotte Bringle Clarke in Edible & Useful Plants of California says her method of harvesting & processing takes 1/2 hr to get enough barley flour for a loaf of bread. I'll post as soon as I've tried it. So far, I've identified barley, oats, a little wheat, lacepod, miner's lettuce, amaranth ( who knew amaranth is just pigweed?!?) bay laurel, pepper tree, bracken, cheeseweed, radish, and squaw root, all growing in vacant lots or public places.....

I've been researching heavy metals & polluting toxins taken up by plants on the roadside. So far, I can find information on levels of toxins in roadside dirt- same as the atmosphere- and the alarming ability of plants to suck up heavy metals, but nothing specifically about roadside plants. I did find out that industrial waste and atmospheric pollutants and insecticides and pesticides used in industrial agriculture stay in the soil and get sucked up by plants if they're water soluble, like cyanide and selenium; mercury pollution seems to be mostly in fish. So at LEAST eating roadside plants, exposed to maybe more car exhaust but far less pesticides, is as safe as eating agribusiness food...... I never knew we could eat so well- off the land, in the city!