Really Good Foods You Probably Haven't Tried

[NW-Bound]

No botanist here, but I just found that your pretty portulaca and the edible purslane are in the same family. If you find out that your flowering plant is also edible, please let us know. Somehow, I suspect that it would not be true. Nature is rarely so kind to give us something that looks nice and also useful in other ways.

Hey, about your earlier comment on kissing a girl with heavy perfume, would it matter to you how pretty she is? The enquiring mind was just asking.

 

[haha]

Hey, about your earlier comment on kissing a girl with heavy perfume, would it matter to you how pretty she is? The enquiring mind was just asking.

If anything matters today, wait few years and it won't.

I like young women of any weight and height; older women I prefer thinner.

I love perfume.

I think the only total wipeout would be body odor, bad breath, missing front teeth or very bad skin.

Regarding body odor, women almost almost smell good which is a lot more than can be said for us.

Now back to the more important topic of what to do with purslane.

Ha

 

[WhoDaresWins]

I haven't read all the posts here but has someone mentioned kimchee yet? Korean in origin and fabulous. Cabbage, onions, garlic, salt, ginger and (sometimes) carrots and peppers. It is fermented and has great probiotic properties as well as being delicious. I buy a jar weekly at the natural food store in town. I got hooked 30 years ago when my husband was in the Army. Try it, you'll like it!

 

[NW-Bound]

Kimchee is an acquired taste, and I have acquired it. I have stopped eating it because of the sodium content. I used it as a pickle.

 

[harley]

Hey, about your earlier comment on kissing a girl with heavy perfume, would it matter to you how pretty she is? The enquiring mind was just asking.

You guys have hit my only two allergies in just one week - poison ivy and flowery perfumes. It just shuts my throat down. I have to speed-walk into department stores holding my breath. That's why the candy was so nasty to me. But if she was pretty enough, I'd try. But I can't hold my breath as long as I once could.

Kimchee! I love it. I read an article once in in a magazine that ranked Kimchee as one of the 5 or 10 healthiest foods in the world. I know it's got a lot of salt, but I suspect the good stuff significantly outweighs the bad.

 

[kyounge1956]

(snip) ...

As far as my favorite "new food" found while traveling in Europe is steak tartare. Most folks in the U.S. (can't get it here) would probably never try it, however with the right spices (and the raw egg) it's really good. And hey, it's low carb!

- Ron

When I was little my parents used to let us kids eat bites of the raw hamburger before making it into patties. I still have a little nibble when fixing burgers (although nowadays they are usually ground turkey rather than beef).

I am surprised nobody has mentioned Digestive Biscuits yet. I was introduced to these during a college year in the UK. The chocolate-covered ones are particularly tasty.

 

[Goonie]

A favorite here in Quebec is a concoction called Poutine, its french fries with curd cheese smothered in gravy..Looks like this.

We had that in a little diner in Banff, AB, a few years ago. It looked kinda nasty, but it was GREAT!!! I've never seen it anywhere since then. I might have to make some up one of these soon (before I forget about it again).

 

[Goonie]

Is the purslane y'all have the same as the portulaca we bought and put in our garden? Beautiful red, orange, yellow, and pink flowers that open in the morning and close up in the afternoon? Or is it a weed variety with no redeeming visual qualities? I'd hate to think we paid for weeds.

This is from the 'Plant Files' at Dave's Garden:

"Some resources note that the leaves and flowers of Portulaca grandiflora (Moss Rose) contain oxalates and are known to cause acute oxalate poisoning.

This species, Portulaca oleracea (Purslane), is sometimes consumed, but no data on the toxicity of Portulaca oleracea could be found in the literature. However, the plant does contain cardiac glycosides and oxalic acids, which can be toxic."

The portulaca that you have, harley, is the Portlaca grandiflora...a.k.a. 'moss rose'. Don't eat it!

But the 'weed' variety has been consumed by folks for years. Here's a little culinary/nutritional info on it from Wikipedia:
"Although purslane is considered a weed in the United States, it can be eaten as a leaf vegetable. It has a slightly sour and salty taste and is eaten throughout much of Europe, Asia and Mexico. The stems, leaves and flower buds are all good to eat. Purslane can be used fresh as a salad, stir-fried, or cooked like spinach, and because of its mucilaginous quality it is also suitable for soups and stews.

Purslane contains more Omega-3 fatty acids than any other leafy vegetable plant. Purslane has .01 mg/g of Eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA). This is an extraordinary amount of EPA for land based vegetable sources. EPA is an Omega-3 fatty acid normally found mostly in fish, some algae and flax seeds. [5] It also contains vitamins (mainly vitamin A, vitamin C, and some vitamin B and carotenoids), as well as dietary minerals, such as magnesium, calcium, potassium and iron. Also present are two types of betalain alkaloid pigments, the reddish betacyanins (visible in the coloration of the stems) and the yellow betaxanthins (noticeable in the flowers and in the slight yellowish cast of the leaves). Both of these pigment types are potent antioxidants and have been found to have antimutagenic properties in laboratory studies.

100 grams of fresh purslane leaves (about 1 cup) contain 300 to 400 mg of alpha-linolenic acid. One cup of cooked leaves contains 90 mg of calcium, 561 mg of potassium, and more than 2,000 IUs of vitamin A."

I'll eat just about anything once....and if it doesn't kill me, I might eat it again.

 

[Janet H]

Ramps - yum. Kind of a cross between a leek and garlic, they grew wild behind my house in NC. Wonderful fried with eggs and taters, or on the top of a pizza, great with beer. They have a strong smell that kinda oozes out of your pores for a day or so after eating - not to be missed

 

[NW-Bound]

... They have a strong smell that kinda oozes out of your pores for a day or so after eating - not to be missed

Umm... Interesting...

I have read of people using milk from cows that have eaten wild onions to make compound butter. The milk is not good for much else. Think Khan posted something about that too a while back.

 

[harley]

This is from the 'Plant Files' at Dave's Garden:

"Some resources note that the leaves and flowers of Portulaca grandiflora (Moss Rose) contain oxalates and are known to cause acute oxalate poisoning.

This species, Portulaca oleracea (Purslane), is sometimes consumed, but no data on the toxicity of Portulaca oleracea could be found in the literature. However, the plant does contain cardiac glycosides and oxalic acids, which can be toxic."

The portulaca that you have, harley, is the Portlaca grandiflora...a.k.a. 'moss rose'. Don't eat it!

I wasn't going to eat mine! It was too expensive. I was actually hoping that the edible "weed" had equally beautiful flowers, so I could more cheaply landscape next year.

 

[NW-Bound]

I wasn't going to eat mine! It was too expensive. I was actually hoping that the edible "weed" had equally beautiful flowers, so I could more cheaply landscape next year.

Oh, dang! So all you were thinking about was ornamental values of a plant.

This being a culinary thread, I was hoping you would say you were contemplating using it to "spice up" your kimchee.

 

[harley]

Oh, dang! So all you were thinking about was ornamental values of a plant.

This being a culinary thread, I was hoping you would say you were contemplating using it to "spice up" your kimchee.

It may be a culinary thread, but it's a LBYM forum.

 

[retire@40]

Nobody has mentioned this yet...

 

[Goonie]

.....I was actually hoping that the edible "weed" had equally beautiful flowers, so I could more cheaply landscape next year.

Ummm....Nope! They have minuscule yellowish flowers that aren't very noticeable or nice looking.....and it will take over a cultivated garden in no time!

If you want cheap landscaping flowers that will pretty much tend to themselves year after year, go with Echinacea (Purple Cone Flowers), Rudbeckia (Black-eyed Susans), and Cranesbill (wild geraniums). You have to water them some the first year, and maybe the 2nd year if it's pretty dry....but after that they'll grow like weeds. They also reseed themselves, so they spread and fill in gaps and bare spots. Plus they bloom from about early June 'til after a hard frost! No 'dead-heading' required....and they're pretty much pest free! I leave mine in the garden until Spring, and the birds eat the seed heads all winter.

We had a very dry July around here, and I didn't give mine a single drop of water...and they didn't wilt at all. In fact they look the best that they ever have!!!

 

[freebird5825]

Do tell us the outcome...

I picked some the other day and compared it to some detailed online photos. My weed is very similar to purslane in growth pattern, but it is definitely not purslane. So it went straight into the compost tumbler.
Moral of the story: When in doubt, throw it out!

 

[NW-Bound]

To avoid being accused of "extreme topic drift", but wanting to reply to a post on another thread, I decided to revive this thread which was a lot of fun back when I just joined this forum.

Eating dead, cooked things is not adventurous at all. Go for the gusto and try "live food."
<<Gross Picture Deleted>>

Well, in some culture, people do eat live animals such as baby octopus. No, I do not care to be so adventurous or cruel. Besides, one does not just try something for the sake of novelty. For me, a culinary venture is not taken without consideration of the potential rewards. If something is not likely to be tasty, one should not take the risk at all. Hence, it is safest to project from something that one is familiar with. People often say something tastes like chicken for the same reason, but in fact it may not be exactly like chicken. The texture and the look may be familiar, but the taste may be different enough for one to try, but not too different to be an unpleasant experience.

So, I would suggest that the prudent would be well served to extrapolate from previous experiences. I said earlier that I passed up an opportunity to sample 'roo meat while in Sydney, and now regretted that I did, though I will be back to Australia some day, I am sure. If someone had told me that it was like something that I already had like venison, buffalo, or whatever, I would be more likely to try it.

Here's something that was fairly safe for me or anyone to try: eel caught from the Loire River, and pheasant from the French country side. Well, pheasant is just like quail, of course. I had had eel before but a different type, and the white meat was somewhat bland. This time, the eel was more like a fish.

Part of the fun of travel is to try different food. Not too exotic for me, please, and I could still have a lot of fun. To be truthful, I no longer remember the tastes of the above dishes, but I still recall ordering a shot of marc (French grappa) to end the meal, before staggering back to our room at the inn. The above meal was consumed at a country inn in Limeray, right on the bank of the Loire River, and a few miles from the Chenonceaux Castle.

Ah, this was how memories were made!