Tag Archives: nettles

The greenest noodles.

family, food and cooking, nature, , ,

Following an afternoon of foraging, an evening of cooking, and a yummy pasta dinner, I went to bed with the feeling that a hot iron was lying on top of my fingers. I wondered if I would be able to go to sleep with my hands so swollen and angry. I finally did; in the morning the pain level was at a slow burn, and it soon dissipated.

It was all from the nettles — all the fun and adventure, the delicious dinner and the extended pain. And it was worth it!

Golden Currant Bush and the Shasta River

My Forest Family had made Nettle Pasta several times in the past, but I hadn’t been around to experience any of the project, and when I’d seen the pictures I’d been a little jealous. So this time, I was glad to participate. We had to go a distance to find out if the nettles were even at the best stage for using — up the highway for a while, then down a one-lane winding road for a while, then out of the car and on foot through a drizzle. Meadowlarks and red-winged blackbirds were calling under the big and dripping sky as we continued along a gravel road that didn’t have enough gravel — till finally we came to the Shasta River. And there were the nettles in all their robust glory. And they weren’t past their prime at all; they looked perfect.

Golden Currant (photo from internet)

I had brought some gardening gloves along on my trip up, not knowing what task they might come in handy for, and I happily showed Pippin that she didn’t need to hunt for an extra pair for me. I set to work filling a couple of grocery bags with bunches of nettles cut with scissors or just pulled out of the top inch of soil. It wasn’t until we were back home that I felt the full effect of the stinging and burning; my gloves only protected me on my palms and not on the backs of my hands, where the glove was cloth. Note to self: pick nettles only with rubber or leather gloves.

Before our outing I had discussed the message of this 300-yr-old rhyme with the children:

Tender-handed stroke a nettle,
And it stings you, for your pains:
Grasp it like a man of mettle,
And it soft as silk remains.

Scout flatly declared it false, and I in any case hadn’t planned to test the truth of the ditty. On Quora someone writes,

It means to act firmly, with resolve. The reference to the nettle relates to the fact that if you make only superficial contact with a nettle plant it will sting you. However if you grasp it firmly with an upward motion you avoid the stinging effect. (The stinging hairs grow in a slightly upward-facing direction. Grasping with a firm upward stroke tends to flatten the hairs against the stem or leaf so their ends can’t penetrate the skin and deliver their sting.) I’ve seen this done with no apparent ill effects and heard of gardeners who can clear a nettle patch bare-handed.

Urtica dioica – European Nettle

The problem I see with the kind of nettles we were dealing with, is that while you are grasping some of the nettles boldly like a man or woman of mettle, other leaves are coming in from the side against your tender hands and stinging you. That’s essentially what they did through my gloves; I wasn’t grabbing with the tops of my hands, after all.

A nettle-eating contest is held in Dorset every year, where super-mettled people compete over such (raw) foods as this European nettle (Urtica dioica) at left, shown in its seed stage. In the article about the contest they explain:

Nettle leaves sting because they are covered in tiny hollow filaments, the silica tips of which break off at the lightest touch to expose sharp points that deliver an instant shot of formic acid into the skin surface, followed by histamine, acetylcholine and serotonin.

Ouch! We took our greens home and washed them (wearing rubber gloves).

After blanching to neutralize the sting, we removed the leaves and incorporated them into an eggy pasta dough.

The noodles were delicious.

We had a pint of blanched leaves left over, which Pippin may make into soup. There were bagfuls of unused raw nettles as well, which I brought home, blanched and froze, and would like to put into soup myself. Maybe this version from the Forager Chef site: Classic Nettle Soup. Have any of you, my readers, cooked with nettles? Have you participated in a nettle-eating contest? Do you have any nettle-stinging stories to tell? I’d love to know!

Soup I might make.

 

Kites fly high at Limantour.

family, nature, wildflowers, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Even though his older brother is the one I call Pathfinder, my son Soldier took the lead in planning our family outing yesterday. Both of them wanted to include not only a hike but some  beach time, coming as they did from places where one can’t make a day trip to the ocean.

All eight of us were able to go in one car, which added to the fun. The children who had recently endured 12-hour days on the road were cheerful, even though it took us a while to get to our destination, a beach farther south than we usually venture: Limantour. The main thing I always retain in my memory of this beach is that it faces south, so it is a little warmer than many North Coast beaches. It is on a long spit of land on Drakes Bay, named for Sir Francis Drake. In the article, “Drake in California”, you can read the many keys to the identification of this bay as the place where the explorer thanked God for a safe haven.

This map shows you where we were in relation to San Francisco:

And this next one reveals Limantour Beach in the Point Reyes National Seashore:

We piled out of the car at the trailhead and hiked about two miles out to the beach, through dense woods opening up from time to time to views of the estuary and wide blue skies; irises in three shades of violet and purple dotted the sunnier banks. Under the trees stands of giant nettles extended back into the dappled shade, with swaths of forget-me-nots or candy flowers at their feet by the path.

Candy Flower – Claytonia sibirica

It was the sort of hike where Grandma, with one or two companions, falls behind the main group to examine and hopefully identify wildflowers, and then eventually catches up when the group stops to wait. Liam spied the Indian Paintbrush first.

The trail was bordered by a lush jungle of trailing blackberry and manroot, strawberries, buttercups and ocean spray. I couldn’t stop for everything that was interesting, and I can only mention a few of the hundreds of plants. But at the time, I pointed out to anyone who would listen, how conveniently the plantain herb was growing near the nettles: if you were to get a nettle sting, you might chew up a few plantain leaves into a poultice to put on the burning flesh to soothe it. Or so I’ve been told many times.

In spite of my lagging, we arrived on the beach and oh, what a lovely, clean and white expanse it was to behold; we didn’t pause, but walked right on out to the shore.

We had brought along three kites, so all the children had plenty of time
holding the fliers against the wind. It was a perfect day for that.

This one above, once it got up, flew by itself all afternoon at the end of its tether,
while we ate a picnic on the sand, and the men dug holes for the waves to flow into.

Then it was time to reel it in, and head back out the way we had come.


It was only on our way out that I had time to really notice these grand bushes of purple lupine, a relation no doubt of the big yellow version I’ve seen so much of farther north, and have even grown in my garden.

Almost the last thing I took a picture of was a baby rattlesnake lying still as could be on the path. It was too young to have rattles, but as we stood around looking at it, the other adults told us about how the shape of its head and neck helped them identify it as a rattlesnake, and how the venom of juveniles is very potent.

I couldn’t see his eye until I saw the picture I had taken enlarged; he was definitely alive and awake. We were told that rattlers aren’t able to strike effectively if they are not coiled up. But we moved on very soon, stepping around the rattleless tail.

My family all departed this morning very early, before the sun was up, and while fog was still lying low in the neighborhood. All day I’ve been reeling myself in! I had hoped to go to bed early tonight, but instead, before I move on into May — coming right up! — I wanted to finish my story of kites and wildflowers, and my dear people.

My birthwort is modest.

my garden, nature, work, , , , , , ,

I’m plant-sitting for a friend who is between lodgings, and one of the specimens in my charge is a pot of healthy nettles. The owner told me to be sure to snip and eat the leaves frequently, because she (the plant) likes that.

Yesterday I stayed home all day, and accomplished a lot of little tasks, including much puttering and pottering outdoors. Though at first I just sat in my corner by the guava and the olive trees, while eating a late breakfast, because the whole Creation had pulled me out of the chilly house into the garden to soak up its benefactions and warm my blood.

We have entered the season when I leave the garden hoses lying around untidily; it adds “human interest” I’m sure. All the lightweight collapsible hoses I invested in got leaks, and I have gone back to heavy and sturdy hoses that last. They are good for strengthening my arms, which is something Proverbs 31 tells us women to do anyway. The bushes with the new leaves that glow like the sun are dwarf pomegranates.

Nutmeg-scented pelargonium in greenhouse.

The day before yesterday, I had told myself, “You only have to do one thing after another — and keep doing it — and in that way you will make a dent in the disorderliness that represents a disheartening backlog of work. Even a little improvement will ease your load!” Of course it helped that I ran no errands at all and in that way avoided having any of those transition times coming and going, which seem to confuse my mind.

First thing: feed the poor lemon tree. I was taught not long ago that it wants feeding four times a year, and after I fed it only two times last year it gave me a good crop. Then I “paused,” and don’t know when it got its last feeding. Now I have set an alarm in my phone to remind me. After the feeding, I gave it a little trim, mostly on top. The photo is “After.”

Near the lemon tree is my little California Pipevine, Aristolochia californica, which I mentioned here recently. It is growing a lot and has several flowers and many new leaves. I read quite a bit about it last night and learned that it is native only to Northern California. It’s very modest compared to showier species of Dutchman’s Pipe, but it is exotic enough to me. I kept wondering what the flowers would look like when they open, but it appears that this is it! If you think it looks carnivorous, you are not alone; in the past people did think that, but it seems they trap but don’t eat:

“The flowers have an unpleasant odor which is attractive to tiny carrion-feeding insects. The insects crawl into the convoluted flowers and often become stuck and disoriented for some time, picking up pollen as they wander. Most eventually escape; the plant is not insectivorous as was once thought. Fungus gnats (Mycetophilidae) may prove to be the effective pollinators.”

They call this “pollination by deceit.” The flowers dry up and crumble and thereby let the insects out to do their bidding. There are over 500 species of Dutchman’s Pipe, known as birthwort, or Aristolochia. Equally exotic and gorgeous butterflies lay their eggs on pipevines all over the world. Do you have any growing wild in your part of the world? Here are some from Sumatra and Brazil:

The flowers are known to have a bad smell, but mine are few and hard to get at, so there is not enough scent for me to notice. It dawned on me that if a Pipevine Swallowtail laid eggs on my plant, and caterpillars hatched out and began eating, they would die of starvation very soon, and I would be sad about that. And if my plant gets so robust that it covers the fence and draws lots of butterflies because its many flowers are exuding stinkiness… well, that would be a mixed blessing. I guess I’ll just wait and see what happens.

Perennial Showy Milkweed coming up.
Yellow Bush Lupine background, lavender at right.

In the meantime, I took a whiff of these geraniums who are also in my temporary nursery section; they only smell delicious. For dinner I cooked up a modest mess of nettle leaves.