Miners Lettuce
Salads are good for you. Right? Compare the nutritional values of lettuce and the answer is it depends on the lettuce in your salad.
One of the best choices is miners lettuce and it is also available for free if you are willing to forage .
" from edible Seattle Miner’s lettuce is a beginning forager’s dream: It’s easy to identify (the leaf that grows all around the stem is a dead giveaway), tastes mild and pleasant and grows abundantly like a weed. Don’t go looking for lettuce, though. “Lettuce” is an unlikely description for this small plant. Growing about 4 to 6 inches tall, each skinny petiole is topped with a succulent pea-green “bowl” or “plate” turned to the sky, a cluster of tiny pinkish-white blossom popping out through the center; young basal leaves sprout out like heart-shaped paddles. Every part—from leaf to stem to flower—of the plant is edible and unlike many wild edibles, miner’s lettuce doesn’t turn bitter when it blooms.
Once you’ve spotted miner’s lettuce, you’ll have a windfall. It grows in fairly thick stands and harvest can be quick. The wild plant also self-sows readily, so while you’re always advised to go from patch to patch when picking wild edibles, you don’t have to worry about over-picking it.”
If you aren't ready for foraging join:ForageSF The Wild Food CSF (community supported forage) “Much like a farm CSA, San Francisco Bay Area customers will receive a box of produce and fish on a weekly subscription basis throughout the season. The only difference is that instead of farmed produce, we deliver a seasonally rotating selection of all wild foraged food; And just in case you don’t know the first thing about cattail rhizomes or wapato root, we give recipes and suggestions on how prepare your edibles. Wild mushrooms (Chanterelles, black trumpet, morels), nettle, minors lettuce, cattail rhizomes etc....
Our mission is to rediscover a forgotten food system, while helping to build a local food economy based on a true respect for the skills of our rural neighbors. Through a network of individual foragers, all harvesting what they know best (and getting 50% of the profit), we can bring an amazing array of selections to your table. From mushrooms to nettle, apples to sea beans, mustard greens to halibut, few weeks will be the same. In addition to food, subscribers will be first in line for guided forages, going out into the woods to learn about what they can glean from the wild.”
Think outside the grocery store.
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