Survival Food Weekend, Part 1: May Yea

This weekend's paid job was to eat only what I picked in the not-a-lawn, and write about what that is and how you, too, could live for a week or longer on what you find growing in any unsprayed field in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, most of the year.

But first this post needs a disclaimer. For many people, one to six weeks of eating only fresh raw plant food still works, as our ancestors always said it did, as a "spring tonic" to help the body burn up the extra calories and eliminate any by-products it may have accumulated over the winter. For a few people, most of whom know they are ill and are already following a course of treatment prescribed by a doctor, this might be dangerous. If you have any chronic disease (like diabetes) that requires medication, consult your doctor before trying any project like this one.

Next, a second disclaimer. This is a phenology post--what I found in one place (Scott County, Virginia, in a partly sunny field about halfway up the Ridge) at one time (the fourth through the sixth of May, 2019). What you find and eat will be different. What I'd find and eat on another weekend would be different. This series provides a list of the five things I ate (May-Yea), ten things I might have eaten but didn't (May-Be), and ten things I'd warn everyone not to eat (May-Nay).

Then, a general remark. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors ate less protein, less fat, fewer carbs, and fewer calories than we did. That was not all bad. Most of us now use up most of the vitamins and minerals we take in just digesting all the fat, protein, and simple carbs we take in--that's how vegans get by on relatively low levels of B-vitamin consumption. Some of the wild survival foods are extremely rich in nutrients, such that you feel, and are, adequately nourished by small quantities of them. Our ancestors chronically craved meat, sweets, fats, and carbs, but on most days they probably survived without them. The only nutrient deficiency that's likely to become acute in three days would be water, which is not a problem in a place where all these green plants are growing. And Dr. John McDougall has made a career of demonstrating that many of us are actually healthier on a plant-based diet closer to what hunter-gatherers ate.



But I'll admit the richer, less natural food in town looked good to me this morning.

May-Yea: The Five Things I Ate

1. Believe it or not, my main meal was violets. It's been a long, slow spring and one corner of the not-a-lawn is still full of them. As food they'd passed their peak. Fresh new violet blossoms in March and April have a delicate flavor, like lettuce but sweeter; the English used to preserve them in candy or marmalade. This weekend, grazing on different colors (actually different species), I not only didn't enjoy noting subtle differences in flavors, but didn't feel that they had much flavor left at all; violet petals stay soft but they lose the tiny amount of crispness and juiciness that makes them such a treat when they're fresh.

(My four species, not very well photographed, are discussed at https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2015/04/phenology-various-violets.html .)

All violets are edible. Even the leaves are edible. The problem, if there is one, is that they're very rich in nutrients. "Health food" people laugh, but both Grandma Bonnie Peters and I have cooked for non-granola types who've panicked when they felt the mostly beneficial effect of high doses of Vitamin C! The body flushes the extra acid away naturally, and people who are locked into the idea of doing Numbers Two and Three only once a day call this flushing effect "running to the bathroom all day." This is a transition effect that subsides if you eat a plant-rich diet, and it's basically healthy; just be prepared.

2. Dandelions aren't weeds; they're vegetables. Like the violets, they were still abundant, but past their peak as food treats. The longer a dandelion leaf is, the older, tougher, and more bitter. For a mild, pleasant bitterness that enlivens a salad, pick leaves shorter than your finger. Again, they're rich in nutrients, and have a stimulant effect on the kidneys rather like coffee, so don't eat too many. Ten or twelve leaves per person is probably enough.When grazing in the not-a-lawn, I eat one leaf at a time, and pay attention to when I start to feel that I've had enough of that bitter green flavor.

This photo by Morethanordinary, available at https://morguefile.com/creative/morethanordinary/1/P1010456 , shows a typical dandelion plant in May or even April. Once the flowers bloom, most of the leaves are tough and bitter, but the little inner leaves next to the flowers are still young enough to taste good as a snack or salad garnish.

(More things to do with dandelions are discussed at https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2011/11/ten-ways-to-appreciate-dandelions.html .)

3. Dock is an old English word for any green "weed." My elders usually used it to mean a plant they might more specifically have called "broad dock," usually called burdock or gobo, Arctium lappa, but the term also included a plant they called "nar'dock" (narrow dock), Rumex crispus. Both have long, narrow, tender and juicy leaves. Both plants have many uses. The leaves have a sour, bitter taste that warns you not to eat too many...five or six are plenty for a snack or salad.

This photo by Marjari at Pixabay, available at https://pixabay.com/photos/creek-burdock-water-summer-duct-358297/ , shows burdock leaves from a foreshortened view (they'd be longer and narrower if not pointed right at the camera), and most leaves are already too big to be palatable raw--though excellent for salve, at this stage.

In England "dandelion and burdock" refers to a fermented drink, but when my elders spoke of "dock and dandelion" they meant the greens, which they picked out of the garden before planting, cleaned, boiled, and ate like spinach. Cooked together, they had a powerful "tonic, cleansing," laxative effect and intense sour-bitter taste that makes spinach, kale, or even mustard seem mellow. Even if you're hungry, one or two bowls full of these greens is probably plenty for a whole season. That acerbic quality that warns you off eating very many dock leaves comes from oxalic acid, which can bind other nutrients and unbalance your diet.

Burdock root is considered a delicacy in some countries (slivered and stir-fried), but I grew up using mature dock mostly as a cleansing and healing salve for any kind of skin irritation. Euell Gibbons reported that children used to crush a leaf and hold it on irritated skin while chanting "Nettle in, dock out, dock rub nettle out." The idea of needing to chant the words in the right tone and tune was pure Magical Thinking but it does accurately reflect how long it takes for crushed dock leaves to soothe irritated skin. They are wonderful for blisters caused by wearing stiff shoes, e.g.



4. Wild garlic. There are a lot of different species of Alliums, wild and cultivated. In my part of the world "wild garlic" usually refers to a small, slim plant whose leaves form straight spikes, sometimes with extra leaves slanting off around the main spikes that stand straight up, typically 12 to 18 inches high, and commonly found in unploughed fields, pastures, and lawns. Its clusters of bluish green spikes are among the first plants to appear after winter or anything else has knocked out other wild plants. It is not confusible with either the wild Alliums that have pretty white flowers, which my elders called "Allium" if they called them anything because they knew them only as cultivated flowers, or the broad-leaved, pungent species my elders called "ramps" (a.k.a. ramsons).

All my favorite free online digital photo sources are full of photos of Alliums, and apparently every other species is more photogenic than ours; I'm not finding a picture of what I pick and eat in spring. This should not be a problem for local readers. Everyone knows wild garlic; they just don't know how valuable it is. I eat it raw, and sometimes add it to cooked foods like ordinary garlic, onion, or chives. It has a robust, garlicky flavor, like onion or garlic "scapes," without the pungency that can make raw garlic bulbs hard to swallow. I like to pick one leaf on a plant that has two, so the plant will survive and go to seed.

5. Mint. Although my brother used to try, technically our peppermint and spearmint supplies do not grow in the not-a-lawn. They grow on the banks of the spring and spring branch. They can be recognized by that familiar minty fragrance. Once again, a few leaves, rinsed and eaten raw, are enough for one "meal." Stop while they still taste like a delicious dessert after the bitter greens and garlic. Later in the year you can pick whole stalks, dry them, and crumble them to steep in hot water for tea.

Looking straight down on a young mint plant By Kham Tran - www.khamtran.com - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3062200 . .

Peppermint and spearmint grow about knee-high before they bloom and go to seed. A related plant called horsemint (horses don't eat it--the name probably started out as "coarse mint") grows over three feet high, in drier soil; you can eat a leaf or two, or make tea of it, but it's less delicious. There are literally dozens of other kinds of mint, some of which can escape from cultivation and take over a garden or stream bank in our part of the world. I have only these three.

If I'd been skinny after a long winter of hunting and gathering, I would probably have wanted to add a higher-calorie food to these five--a total of about a cup of raw plant material a day. Like most Americans I had a few surplus pounds to lose, and was pleased to see a few of them melt away over the weekend.