The Experiment: Nasturtium Soup
One of the things that I've been wanting to do in my life is learn where I can pick my own food in case of an apocalypse, hint-hint ๐, or I'm just hungry and need to eat. Fear has stopped me for the most part. Without a teacher to guide me, picking plants out in the world that are edible is a scary thing. I mean, what happens if I identify the wrong plant and I eat it and all sorts of weird stuff starts happening to me?
The grocery store has everything that I need, correct? All that I need is the money to purchase what might be found right outside their store for free. Damn. What if I don't have money? I'm going to starve!
We, at least here in America, have been trained to see many weeds that are edible as something that is akin to the coronavirus - kill it and distance yourself from it before it kills you and your entire family and, possibly, the entire world. So, we spray these things with toxic chemicals that poison us, the groundwater, the ground itself, the air, the birds and the bees - basically all life - to keep us "safe."
We mow our lawns and destroy the life that can give us sustenance because it looks "beautiful" and clean. Have you ever asked to whose standards we're living up to? Do you agree with Abraham Levitt when he states:
No single feature of a suburban residential community contributes as much to the charm and beauty of the individual home and the locality as well-kept lawns.
Why do we destroy our food, "weeds" that can be gathered and eaten by you at no monetary cost, "weeds" that have beneficial healing properties, in the name of charm and beauty?
Let's not even get into how much water is being wasted to keep these symbols of "high" status. Let's not get into the man-hours that it takes to care for this worthless charm and beauty. It makes me sick.
Y'all nuts!!! It is time to stop this crazy practice on the scale that it is. Sure, a lawn or two to play some games on is nice and fun but not everyone in the world needs to have one. Honestly, you'll be okay without it.
Would you rather eat basically free food or have a lawn that sucks you dry of your valuable resources, the most valuable being that of time?
Would you rather go to a grocery store and purchase food that comes from somewhere (sometimes they're honest and sometimes they're not honest about what they did to the food before it arrived at their store) or would you rather go out and pick the free food that you know where it came from and what is on it?
To me, the choice is pretty simple. I just have to put it into practice and get over my fear. Nowadays, we have phones that are connected to the internet. So, when I searched for common edible plants, a few common edible plants appeared right in front of my face. No guesswork. I've seen these plants almost everywhere for almost my entire life.
Now, I didn't go buck wild either. I don't have to build Rome today, right now. Let's keep it simple and easy.
So, for this experiment, I chose one wild plant, the nasturtium, that I could find in the city. I chose one simple and easy recipe. The rest of the ingredients came from the store. One small step. Simple and easy.
Below are the results of this experiment.
FYI - I and the other people who ate what I cooked, are still alive. That is how I am writing to you now. ๐
Nasturtium Soup
This is where I got the recipe. Because there were three of us plus a two-year-old, I multiplied the ingredient list by three so that we would have six plus servings.
Here is everything that I needed, minus the almond milk because I didn't put it into the picture and realized it after I'd already started chopping things up. Oops. Moving on.
You might be thinking "That is a lot of romaine." The thing about leafy greens when they get cook is they shirk considerably.
That is the nasturtium leaf and flower on top of the romaine. Isn't it beautiful!!!
Honestly, where in the recipe did it call for tears? I couldn't find it but they ended up in there after three onions were chopped up.
Mmm... garlic. The recipe called for much less but we are people who love garlic so I chopped up two whole bulbs. Mmm... garlic. Oh, yeah. Potatoes too. lol
Butter in the pot. Go butter, go.
Tossed in the onions and the celery. I let this cook for an extra 5-10 minutes because there were quite a bit more ingredients than what the recipe called for. The garlic went in once that time was up.
Two minutes later, everything else was added.
About thirty minutes later, it looked edible.
Now, this was the first time that I've ever made soup where the instructions directed me to blend everything together once it was cooked. How interesting.
And here we have the finished product with raw bits of the nasturtium flower and leaf on top to give it that little extra kick.
BLAM! That's it, folks. I lived to tell the tale and I'm now armed with new knowledge and wisdom. Praise the ancestors.
All photos above were taken by me, @tristancarax.
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