In the Spring a Not-So-Young Man's Fancy Lightly Turns to Thoughts of Eating Something Poisonous

Last year, after posting about pokeweed (Phytolacca americana), I finally tried the stuff out, even though the stuff is poisonous. Thrice-boiled pokeweed (with the water changed after each boil), known formally as poke sallet, is a staple of rural southern foodways.

Today, after locking up at work, I picked a mess of poke, which will be boiled tomorrow:

I also picked a bagfull of nettles, which pack a whallop of a sting, but have no toxins... though the mature, flower-bearing plants accumulate phytoliths, which can irritate one's urinary tract. I tend to parboil the nettles to kill the 'sting', though drying them has the same effect.

As the old maxim goes, the dose makes the poison, and even such commonly eaten plants as the ubiquitous red kidney bean and spinach contain toxins. The best way to deal with these toxins is to eat a variety of plants, which is pretty much what I get when I forage- I throw the miscellaneous greens together into a food processor and puree them into a green slurry, the composition of which varies as the foraging season progresses. Now, pokeweed will join the nettles and dock and garlic mustard and lambs' quarters and dandelion greens in the mix.