After work yesterday, I went out to the parking lot to find dinner.
I live on the top floor of an office building, and my access to land is limited to a patch of grass, rose bushes and trees at the edge of the asphalt. I wasn’t optimistic about the foraging prospects there, but in minutes, the patch yielded enough edible greens and flowers in the grass to make a salad.
Investing some time in learning basic plant identification and common species in Maine is worth the time. Here are a few common edibles I found and ways to use them.
With most plants, including the classic dandelion, I collect the youngest leaves and flowers for the best taste and texture.
Broadleaf plantain, a wide-leaved, low-lying plant (not related to the fruit in the banana family) that often blends into grass, also tastes best when you pick the young leaves. I would compare the flavor to a greener, wilder chard.
Curly leaf dock shoots rounded out my salad base. My previous relationship with dock centered on trying to pull it from garden beds, then breaking it off at the root and having to dig it out. The lemony green bean taste almost redeemed it for me.
One of my favorite finds was the purple dead nettle, a small, beautiful flowering plant in the mint family. It isn’t a stinging nettle, so you don’t need to be afraid of it. This one is pleasant to eat raw, though it can be dried into tea or cooked. It tasted to me like a minty verbena, pleasant enough to eat on its own.
The forsythia flowers ringing the parking lot made a decent snack as well, and brightened up a salad bowl. I also found strawberry plants spreading around the bases of the trees, which I’ll be sure to return to next month.
As the season progresses, I’ll be keeping an eye out for other favorites like wood sorrel, purslane, lamb’s quarter and garlic mustard.
Wood sorrel is the most delicious green I’ve ever had — the leaves are very tender and taste like a mild lemon. Lambsquarter and purslane remind me of spinach and add nice variety to other greens when sauteed.
Garlic mustard tastes most like the first part of its name and is one of my favorites because it’s so versatile and strong — and it’s invasive, so I feel good about collecting it. They disperse an incredible number of seeds every year and the roots change the fungal network of soil, making it difficult for other plants to grow.
The leaves make an amazing pesto, and you can chop up the stems to cook or eat raw.
Aside from brightening up my dinner, digging around in the yard was a pleasant change of pace after a day at the computer.
A farmer I interviewed for another story earlier that day had told me about how she felt a close connection to her land and how much she noticed it changing from day to day. That’s something I miss about working outside, and taking this short adventure made me feel more tuned in again.
It’s been several years since I last used my plant identification background in any serious way. I expected the knowledge would have slipped away from me by now, like any language does when you don’t use it.
Because plants I knew haven’t stood out to me in my day-to-day time out back, I thought they weren’t there. I didn’t realize I hadn’t been paying attention.
If you try out a backyard dinner yourself, be sure to thoroughly wash anything you gather, especially from a parking lot area. If you’re concerned about pesticide or insecticide use, look into whoever maintains your property and find out what they use on it.
