Weeds

What's the deal with the frilly, designer greens?
 
Just got home from my cousin's where we had a family party.
 
She made a huge salad and it consisted completely of those nasty, bitter things that are not lettuce.
 
At least I could pick out the pine nuts without being noticed.
 
Do people really like those greens?  They're weeds!
 
 
 
 
 

Folks eating the fern bar?
 

I don't understand the fascination with this, either, other than it's chef-inspired, and people, in turn, think it's cool.   I believe chefs often get a little too cute with their food. 

I recall weed from my college days.  I sorta like weed then.  It was not in my salad but sometimes in my dessert like brownies or to be enjoyed after dinner
 
Like ex prez Bill Clinton, I did not inhale.
 
Paul E. Smith
Knoxville, TN

My partner favors those things in a salad too but I can't stand them, give me old iceberg lettuce any day. I hate most is that they are tough to stab with your fork. And no, I never participated in that "other" kind of weed though many friends did.

If you are talking about frisee, I love it.  I really like a frisee aux lardons salad with a poached egg.
 
Oh, and I like pignolis (pine nuts), too. 

People eat things that are green?

When our boys were still small we became enamored of Euell Gibson ( for you youngsters, he was a guru of eating off the bounties of nature - anything but cultivated vegetables). We would drag the poor kids along roadsides and thru woods and fields to pick all those delicious and nutritious things that Gibson touted in his books. Dandelions were tolerable, purslane a bit less so, wild chicory, nettles, sumac, and an endless list of inedibles all turned out to be things only to be eaten in times of mass starvation. Gibson proved to be a false prophet.
 
But, those bitter greens you complain of are the stuff of a great salad to some of us. I grow a dozen kinds of lettuce and other similar greens every year in our backyard garden. Some are remarkable; upland cress is hot like pepper, mache is slightly bitter and has a nice crunch, all the leaf lettuces are bitter to some degree, have a nice crunch and take to all manner of salad dressings  - although a simple oil and vinegar is usually our choice. Leaf lettuce like Black seeded Simpson, taken leaf by leaf, rolled up a bit and dipped in a Thousand Island or French dressing is a Spring delight.
 
BTW: Beware of pine nuts from China. hey are from species that were until recently considered inedible, and some people develop an unpleasant  condition called "pine mouth" from eating them. 
 
Cheers, John 
 
 

Marlene, you are so right. Bernie Madoff should be put on a strict diet of weed junk, till he tells where the rest of the money is...a culinary waterboarding, only worse!

I am pretty fond of dandelion greens, but then I grew up eating them.  The rest of it...I call it the "sticks and twigs" salad.  It's what we've been getting served via catering at our arena for the last ten years or so.  Somehow my mother interpreted that as "I love this" and it's the only kind of bag salad she buys unless I specify one that has actual lettuce in it.
 
I don't get it, either.

seafarer john


When our boys were still small we became enamored of Euell Gibson.............

 
That would be Euell GIBBONS. See him here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XJMIu1818Y

Try this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XJMIu18I8Y

You guys are right. My apologies to any innocent person out there named Euell Gibson.
 
Cheers, John 

I love bitter greens.  Then again, it's something I grew up with.  Dandelion or chicotta(chicory) with onion, hard boiled eggs, olive oil and vinegar, or broccoli rabe with plenty of garlic, crushed red pepper and olive oil.  One item I never tried was cardoons  Supposed to be as bitter as heck, but delicious.  Maybe one of our Sicilian posters could elaborate.

Weeds are not something chefs came up with, people ate them from time immemorial, but it seems they have become pretty darn popular. I feel like I should pay hommage that it is not a trendy food, but at the same time, it is not something I really care for either.
 
Had a salad with peppery arugula, radicchio, frisee, micro greens, endive? As pitiful as it sounds, I like my iceberg and romaine lettuces wayyyyy more. 
 

OK..Joerogo..now we are talking.
I never had wild dandlion greens with eggs, but that sounds delish.
I like them dressed with a simple oil/vinegar dress and accompanied by Asiago cheese, pickled cherry peppers, fresh mortadella, and some good crusty bread...oh the Saturday lunches of my childhood. 
 
 

I for one dig the weeds now and then. Iceberg isn't really food other than its edible and can be covered in salad dressing and more and more they are cross-engineering other greens with iceberg to get that ever desirable food trait...shipping  durability. Every time I go to the store the green leaf and romaine looking more like odd shaped iceberg...

My personal preference is romaine and leaf lettuce for a salad. However, as an experiment this summer, I ate a root of Queen Annes lace right out of the ground. I had heard they were really wild carrots, so I pulled one up, dusted it off, and ate it.It was very carrot like, almost sweet. Now, I normally dont go around eating things out of my backyard, but I was SO curious!

bill voss


Folks eating the fern bar?

 
Been thru WEED for years. OH, do I miss those times.
Wife grew up on a farm in E. PA and if Dandelions in the yard better be on the plate, with a warm Bacon Dressing. Still does this today.
In the South we Have Poke Salad. Most deadly if not done right. Many Greens here. Many Wild Mushrooms.

when we were dirt poor when I was  real little, we ate a LOT of wild crap. Puffballs, lambsquarters, dandelions, purselaine, anything that grew and could be boiled to a paste. (Mom was the worst cook)

 I enjoy micro greens when mixed with some romaine, green or red leaf, and iceberg. Eaten by themselves, micro greens are bitter. My dressing of choice for micro salad is simple olive oil, balsamic vinegar, sea salt, and fresh cracked black pepper.
 
  JMHO
 
  David O.

Curbside Grill, the dandelions with bacon dressing are wonderful. The first time I ever had them was at my future husband's house. His mother would cook them briefly and then add bacon with a little of the grease, sugar and vinegar, and top it off with chopped hard-cooked egg. I couldn't get enough. My mother was from Tennessee and didn't know about this delicacy.

Arugula, yum! Mache, yum!
 
Iceburg has very little nutritional value...not even fiber.

 
I agree with the original poster.  These lawn weeds in the "trendy" salads are bitter and nasty.  It seems as if the fancy-pants type restaurants serve the weeds more frequently, resembling something pulled from the lawn.....a weed.   A true roadfood place should never serve such foofoo trendy "salad".    If you take notice, most people who eat this stuff have to cover it in dressing, just to make it tolerable to swallow.   I don't use dressings, and eat my salad "straight up", therefore I really dislike this trendy fad of bitter weed salad.
 
Glenn
 
   

I sometimes purchase what they call a spring mix from Fresh Express which has chicory and some of the other greens mentioned.I don't mind eating it.They are better for you in  a way since they have more vitamins than iceberg lettuce.The same goes for Boston or Bibb lettuce and romain as well.I think iceberg has probably had most of the vitamins bred out of the plant,though I will eat it. You can also eat wild mustard and plaintains,the weed not the bananas I am refering too.

How do we really know that those bitter, nasty, curly things have more vitamins in them?  Who are we believing?
 
 

That spring mix is what we get served at work all the time, and what my mother somehow decided is the only one I like as opposed to being the only one I really can't stand!
 
What good are the bitter nasty-tasting weeds whether they have more vitamins in them or not if everyone stops eating salads because they taste so awful?  I'd think it would be better to get the minimal amounts of vitamins available in normal lettuces than to get none at all because you won't put the weeds in your mouth.
 
And iceberg at the very least has a bunch of vitamin K in it...when I was on blood thinners I wasn't allowed to eat it at all.

 
<<..."They are better for you in  a way since they have more vitamins than iceberg lettuce.The same goes for Boston or Bibb lettuce and romain as well."....>>
 
 
 
Boston/Bibb, and Romaine are still real lettuce, and are tolerable.  It's those nasty curly weeds that are hard to take. 
 
Glenn