Our summer garden has gotten a late start and we are an hour away from a produce market. Earlier this week we ran out of produce and stood around scratching our heads about what to eat. Salmon sounded good and we have some frozen, but salmon with what? Scallops sounded real good too. We could put on rice but since I am passing up the grains this season, I would just be chasing garlic and butter on a plate with each tender scallop.
What to eat?
The garden did have a solution: It is an abundant producer of the high Omega 3 weed edible plant purslane (which I wrote about last summer in a similar predicament).
The little “leaves” on the succulent-like plants make a great stir-fry and are particularly good in scrambled eggs.
@ Amazon.
I ordered and planted the seed for this only to realize it grows in my yard-I never knew what it was called. Going back to read the post now. Zerrin (a young Turkish blogger)over at Giverecipe.com has some great recipes using purslane, you should check them out Amanda ;o)
Thanks!
Leesie — I will check out that blog. Thanks so much.
I have seen purslane seeds for plants that are more upright, not sprawling like the regular weed. I may actually buy those and try them. I have this vision of increasing the roaming area for the hens and seeding it with purslane. They turn the Omega 3 ALA in the purslane into DHA in their eggs. I have almost all of the materials I need — some stray fencing in particular. What I don’t have is a 20-year-old guy to help.
I would so love to eat purslane, but the stuff I find growing is in public areas which I’m sure are sprayed. I don’t have my own yard yet, but when I do I’m planting this.
Just a quick note about it… I saw Andrew Zimern (of Bizarre Foods) eat some on his Survivor Special the other day. I was knocking my husband in the ribs and nodding my head, ‘cuz this is the stuff I’ve shown him growing in the cracks near my apartment, and he just thinks I’m nuts.
Purslane is Armageddon food. Anything that can grow from three pieces of sand in the crack of a sidewalk will be on this planet forever.
Do any of the purslane recipes take away some of the icky-to-me mouth feel? I tried some of my common weedy backyard variety and just couldn’t get past the mucilageyness of it. I will give it another try if someone helps me get past that!