Eat your weeds!

Every spring, as I clear out my vegetable patch in preparation for the new crop of weeds, I inevitably find large quantities of a strange little plant. If Jade Plant grew in a vine, this is what it would look like. It grows close to the ground, with long fat reddish runners and little clumps of fat shiny leaves. And it seems to grow almost overnight. No sooner do I clear out an area than after the next rain, there is a spider network of this weed over the entire clearing.

A couple of weeks ago, in researching another weed, I found out that this is Common Purslane (Portulaca oleracea).

It is apparently edible, and in fact, not merely edible, but highly nutritious, loaded with uncommon quantities of Vitamin E, Vitamin C and Omega 3 fatty acids, along with various other desirable micronutrients. It is eaten in Europe, Asia, Latin America. Leave it to us to ignore it!

Several days ago, I made the experiment. Luckily, this baby seems to be an all season kind of plant, so I went into my prodigious weed crop and dug around among the tomatoes. Sure enough...there was plenty of this purslane stuff. I pulled up a bunch of clumps, washed them well, and started right in.

Raw, the stems are slightly tangy. Some of the leaves are, too, but many are just kind of spinachy flavored. The stems have a somewhat slimy quality, sort of like cooked okra, but not quite as much.

Most of the harvest got cooked in a spicy sour soup (tamarind, mustard seed, sesame base) usually reserved for spinach or another leaf vegetable whose English name I don't know. It was quite good! The slimy quality of the stems is somewhat accentuated in soup form, which for me is a good thing.

I declare this experiment a success!

Who knew?