by Bill Heavey
During the time of cherry picking and pie making, I had more or less been thinking continually about Michelle, someone for whom it was routine to include foraged ingredients in daily cooking. I pictured her standing in her kitchen—with several pots on the stove and two boys rumpusing in the next room—and ducking outside for thirty seconds to grab a handful of dandelion greens or daylily buds, either as an addition to something or as a dish by itself. That someone I knew did this—reflexively, without the slightest interest in impressing anyone else or making “a statement”—seemed extraordinary. And very cool. The images of her doing this were more vivid than I wanted. I was increasingly having trouble separating this culinary mind-set—that the use of wild plants in daily cooking needn’t be a solemn, weighty act but could rather be a kind of everyday magic—from the only person I knew who practiced it. Whenever I tried to picture myself cooking this way, the image that came wasn’t me but Michelle. I always saw her backlit by slanting evening light, standing before a stove, pans crackling with just-picked greens, absently tucking a loose lock of strawberry blond hair behind an ear. She was fully engaged in her work and there was no doubt in my mind that she was good at it.
One morning, as I looked over my notes from outings with Hue and reread the list of edibles he had found on my property, it occurred to me that I could make a salad of them. Most were weeds growing right in my grass. I could still hear Paula’s diatribe about how people happily ate produce from South America grown in God knows what as long as it was displayed under the consecrating fluorescent lights and misters of a grocery store. She was right. A lawn salad might be thought of as one man’s act of defiance. The truth was that people who dropped phrases like “the politics of food” into everyday conversation always struck me as people who didn’t have enough to occupy themselves. But if my salad was seen as one principled man’s rejection of the industrial food system and I became a folk hero, that was cool, too. What really got me off the dime was the fact that making the thing supplied an excuse to stay in touch with Michelle. My motives, I could plausibly claim, were purely professional. This was a total lie, of course. But the important thing was that it gave me deniability on the older-man-hitting-on-a-younger-woman front, which was exactly where I was headed. In my dreams, at least.
The prospect of using my lawn the way other people used the produce section seemed safe enough. Not a speck of seed, fertilizer, or pesticide—organic, inorganic, or extraterrestrial—had hit my lawn since I had moved in three years ago. I felt I deserved a good conduct medal just for mowing the damn grass occasionally. I e-mailed Michelle, explaining my plan and asking for a feasibility assessment. She wrote back saying it was totally doable and described the contents of her own yard, which she suspected of being similar to mine. Hers, she wrote, was “roughly 20 percent grass, 70 percent weeds, 3 percent mushrooms, and 7 percent dog turds. But in aggregate the yard is green, so to me it’s an acceptable lawn; I never have understood our national lawn fetish.” (I was right on her wavelength about the lawn fetish, which, let’s be frank, is nothing short of a national brainwashing.) In fact, she went on, one untampered-with lawn was so like the next that she was pretty confident that she could list the edible weeds in mine, despite the distance and the fact that she had never seen it. Which she proceeded to do. “The weeds, more or less in descending order of prevalence, are white clover, broadleaf plantain, buckhorn plantain, violets, wild alliums (onions and garlic), henbit, chickweed, sorrel, dandelions, and Indian strawberry. You didn’t share the species list you are working from but I suspect your lawn is pretty similar, though with a higher percentage of dandelions, since I’ve been eating ours steadily since moving in here a decade ago.” I was simultaneously encouraged and abashed by her response. It was fantastic that she was writing back to me so quickly and unguardedly. On the other hand, I was intimidated by her level of plant knowledge. She took this stuff seriously. Also, something else was now clear. What had begun as an idle thought—Hey, what if I make a salad out of the weird stuff I forgot to kill in my lawn?—was now something I couldn’t back out of.
Unfortunately, she continued, the short period in early spring when nearly all of these were putting out their new shoots and leaves and were therefore at peak edibility was months past. Most had grown tougher since then and were now pumping out bitter chemicals of one sort or another. They did this to discourage animals—including us—from eating them. “Now, alas, they are more like goat fodder; won’t hurt you but, since you lack multiple stomachs and/or a rumen, will be hell to masticate and digest.” I was not entirely doomed, however, she went on. Most of these plants hadn’t stopped growing altogether; it’s just that by this time they were putting only a tiny fraction of their energy into new growth, apparently as insurance. In the event of some catastrophic early summer event—drought being the most likely—these guys would still have had a shot at starting over. The tiny leaves of this new growth, Michelle said, would be the most tender and least bitter. They grew at the very center of the plant.
So it wouldn’t be a big salad. I was okay with that. It was more about variety and showing that the weeds we’ve been trained to kill as if they threatened the foundations of the Republic were actually nutritious. I was also intrigued by the notion that plants, like people, tended to get tougher and more bitter as time passed.
Armed with my Peterson’s Edible Wild Plants, Hue’s list, a printout of Michelle’s e-mail, and images from the online Weed Identification Guide of Virginia Tech, I stepped out of my air-conditioned porch office and into one of those D.C. summer days that plasters your shirt to your back in three minutes whether you’re moving or not. Michelle had nailed my yard, plantwise. I’d never really noticed before, but a multitude of white clover flowerheads stretched before me all the way to the back fence. I stopped short at the second sentence of the Peterson’s “Uses” entry for white clover: “Although not among the choicest of wild foods . . .” I’d been around the block a few times by this point. “Not among the choicest” was code for “Tastes so bad you’ll wish it were poisonous.” I opted to go light on white clover flowerheads, which actually had a faintly sweet odor, and dropped only a few into my paper sack.
Broadleaf and buckthorn plantain were also easy to spot, especially once I got down on their level. Eyeballing my lawn while prone, I was struck by how little actual grass there was. It was nearly all green weeds of one kind or another. If I had used weed-killing fertilizer, my yard would have looked as though I were receiving a federal grant to grow dirt. Each plantain grew in a circular pattern known as a “basal rosette,” a common structure among edibles. Kneeling, my face tickled by plaintain stalks, I carefully peeled back the outer leaves until I found the tiny leaves at the center of some of these rosettes. After an hour, I was soaked. I had grass stains everywhere. And a stiff back. For my pains I had nearly a forkful of greens. In short, my salad was coming along splendidly.
It was an absurd little project, yet I found myself strangely buoyed rather than frustrated by this. I had a bit of momentum and meant to harness it. I struck out on violets, which I still believe were there but were unidentifiable, at least to me, now that they had lost their telltale blue flowers. The heart-shaped leaves of the plant were everywhere, but there were any number of unremarkable plants with heart-shaped leaves in my Peterson’s, including—I was reasonably sure—a few that would lay you out in no time.
Nor, armed as I was with descriptions and color printouts of the plant, could I find henbit. I knew that I had some; Hue had several times pointed it out. But I didn’t see it now. Nor did I see purple deadnettle, its alluringly named cousin in the mint family, which he’d found growing in a crack in my front steps. I returned to the site but found only dandelions there. Those were edible, of course, so I went down on my knees to find the tiniest leaves of their basal rosettes. The heat was infernal by now. A passing car slowed to a crawl, apparently curious about the religion that led a man to prostrat
e himself before his own front steps during the most sweltering part of the day.
Next on the list were wild onions, a patch of which had taken up residence in the seriously overgrown flower bed by the air-conditioning compressor. At least I think it was wild onion. Since it was not in flower either, it might also have been wild garlic. Or possibly field garlic. Whatever it was, it thrived in the microclimate of hot wind forcefully discharged by the compressor. And since all three were edible, it didn’t really matter. I dug up a few bulbs, peeled off the dirt and outer layers, and added them to the mix.
Now that I looked, the unpromising flower bed—sun-baked clay as hard as cement—had more varieties of weeds than any other spot in the yard. Here I found chickweed as well as wood sorrel, usually the first (sometimes only) edible plant that children learn, easily known by its clover-like leaves and agreeably sour taste. I took some of both plants, as well as a few Indian, or false, strawberries. These are the only kind of wild strawberry I have ever found, although virtually all wild edibles books assured you that the true (and delicious) wild strawberry was everywhere waiting to be found in some sunny or partially sunny location with poor, low-nitrogen soil that also happened to be both well-drained and moist. Indian strawberries had all the taste of Styrofoam packing material but made up for it by being eminently easy to find. Still, they were a vivid red and, since the eye-stomach nexus was not to be overlooked, I picked a few as a garnish. I later learned from Michelle that they are extremely nutritious.
At last, after three or four hours spent shopping my lawn, I retreated inside and set to washing, rinsing, and finally chopping my harvest. The greens barely covered the bottom of a small salad plate. It looked pretty and had an interesting variety of leaves and stems. But it would never have passed muster in a restaurant as any sort of “salad.” Up until this moment my life experience had taught me that salad came from one of three sources: someone else’s wooden salad bowl, a waiter, or a plastic bag. Mine was unmediated by any of these. With a sense of misgiving—Michelle had warned me that it would be fibrous—I mixed up the vinaigrette for which Michelle had sent a recipe and dressed it.
My first bite was . . . not bad. I realize that’s a cop-out, but it was true. It was agreeably crunchy at first bite, after which I settled in for a prolonged period of mastication. She had nailed the fibrous part. I chewed until I felt as though the muscles on the sides of my head were actually increasing in size. I’d overdressed the salad—out of fear, mostly. I think I hoped that vinaigrette might have medicinal properties. This turned out to be a good move for entirely different reasons. Basically, the extra liquid made swallowing the partially chewed salad—which was as chewed as this salad could ever be—easier. If I had insisted on chewing until the plants had been properly broken down, I think I’d still be there now.
But below that first crunch and the vinaigrette I could taste the sour kick of the sorrel, an agreeable bitterness coming from another leaf—chickweed? dandelion?—and something else, something elusive that registered on my taste buds only as a state of being: it tasted alive. I had the pronounced sensation of eating raw things. This seemed strange, in that every salad I’ve ever eaten consisted of raw things. But these plants were a different kind of raw. They had just been separated from their roots and were not yet dead. They were the salad equivalent of a raw oyster. Vividly, stubbornly raw. The sensation was singular yet elusive. You couldn’t put your tongue on any particular part that nailed down the taste. There was actually a moment when it tasted like dirt, but good dirt, working, purposeful dirt. Then I remembered that outing with Paula when I’d eaten the wild watercress. This salad had that same insistant vitality. And in five very chewy bites, long before I’d had time to sort the tastes any further, it was over. I was trying to pretend otherwise, but I felt a tad disappointed. I’d eaten my yard, but the act hadn’t changed me. Except that I was now a guy who had eaten his yard. Which was not exactly a great conversation starter.
A few minutes later, thanks to a large burp, I was able to revisit the salad. What I remember tasting was the sharp tang of wild garlic. Garlic always seems to get the last word.
Not long after, I wrote to Michelle, saying I’d succeeded in collecting and eating a salad of lawn weeds, which weren’t bad, although she had been correct about the goat-fodder part. All in all, I wrote, I wasn’t sure how to feel about the whole thing. I was proud that I’d done what I set out to do. On the other hand, the more I thought about it, the less it seemed to amount to. It was like a man setting out to make himself a suit out of dryer lint. Even if he succeeded, what could he really claimed to have accomplished?
A couple of days later I received an e-mail from Michelle saying she was proud of me. Her memory of the event, I later found, was quite different from mine. “You sounded so proud of yourself when you wrote me about it,” she would say. “I thought that was adorable.” No man is entirely comfortable with that particular compliment. We’d much rather be thought of as hard-core or fearless or tough. But if I’d known adorable what was Michelle was after, I’d have done whatever it took to be that.
SOUR CHERRY PIE
(Adapted from The Joy of Cooking, 1975 edition, by Marion Rombauer Becker)
2 packaged prepared pie crusts (from the supermarket dairy case)
4 cups fresh sour cherries (Good sour cherries invariably involve crime. I obtain them by theft. If you succeed in finding ones for sale, the price will make you feel as if you’ve been robbed.)
2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons quick-cooking tapioca
11/3 cups sugar
2 tablespoons Kirsch or Amaretto liqueur (optional)
2 tablespoons butter cut into small pieces
Do not rinse wild cherries or Paula Smith will come after you. Don’t ask me why, but she’s adamant on the subject. Instead, pit the fruit and place into a bowl. Mix tapioca and sugar, and then gently fold into the cherries. Sprinkle on liqueur, if using. Let stand for 15 minutes. Okay, 10 minutes is good enough.
Meanwhile, preheat oven to 450 degrees F. Pat out one pie crust into pie pan to form the bottom crust, making sure edges cover the rim of the pie pan. (Skip this step if you’re using the kind that comes in its own aluminum pie plate). Pour the fruit into the shell. Dot with butter. Place second crust on top of pie, crimp edges, then prick all over with fork. Crimp tinfoil over the edges of the crust to keep it from burning. Good luck with this.
Don’t forget to put the pie on a goddamn cookie sheet. Bake for 10 minutes at 450 degrees F, then reduce oven to 350 degrees F and bake for about 40–45 more minutes until the filling is bubbling. (Check the pie about 10–15 minutes after lowering the oven temp. By now the crust will be half-burned because the foil didn’t stay in place. Take the pie out and use whatever you can devise—toothpicks, finishing nails, velcro—to try to reposition the foil.)
Let pie cool for much longer than it should require, 45 minutes to 1 hour. Eat at one sitting with a half-gallon of vanilla ice cream.
Chapter Six:
Among the Cajuns
A Cajun man named Jody Meche and I were bombing down the river into wind that was reshaping the frames of my glasses and sending over the bow an occasional splash of spray that stung like buckshot. Despite a good set of foul weather gear, I was wet, cold, and getting pounded like a piece of cube steak. After about ten minutes of this, during which I found myself thinking of a story Paula had once told me, I decided to turn and face aft. I was immediately much more comfortable. Paula’s story concerned a possum she’d caught in the Havahart trap she’d set for the raccoons raiding her garden. Not having any use for the possum, she’d opened the rear of the trap and come back three hours later, only to find that the animal hadn’t budged. Possums, as is widely known, aren’t God’s brightest creatures. Facing forward and seeing nothing but cage, this one had been so convinced of its captivity that it saw no reason to turn around. Paula had forced it to
freedom at the point of a sharp stick. Thinking of this, I smiled. I might not be the smartest of men. But I was one up on that possum.
Technically, the water we were on was the Atchafalaya River, only that’s not what it’s called here. This part—a powerful fourteen-mile chute, dug 1,000 feet wide and dredged to a depth of 100 feet by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers—is called the Whiskey Bay Pilot Channel. When the Mississippi floods, it endangers downstream population centers like Baton Rouge and New Orleans. When that happens, a series of massive flood control gates upriver can be opened, dispersing some of the excess elsewhere. One of those places is into the Whiskey Bay Pilot Channel, which empties into the sparsely populated Atchafalaya Basin, the largest swamp in the United States, roughly 3,000 square miles of swamplands, bayous, black-water lakes, and bottomland hardwood forest.