Dock, a Second Opinion

In the Spring, I wrote a post about curly dock, an invasive weed, related to buckwheat and knotweed, that happens to produce delicious, slightly tangy leaves in the Spring. Now that Summer is in full swing, the plants produce a plethora of rust-colored seeds:

The seeds are easy enough to harvest, just grab a stem and run it between your fingers to loosen the seeds and their accompanying tubercules:

You can eat the seeds out of hand for a quick trailside snack (they are good, but the husk-to-seed ratio is not in your favor ). I imagine they are much better hulled and ground into a substitute for buckwheat flour, something I haven't tried yet, but I'll do it before week's end. I figure I'll place the seeds in a sack and beat them with a stick, sort of like a quick-and-dirty substitute for a threshing flail, then winnow them and grind them up to make pancakes. There are tons of dock seeds available, I just have to get the preparation down pat.

You see, if civilization ends, you don't need buckets of overpriced crap sold by racist grifters, you just need to know your delicious weeds.