Once again, we’re on vacation. This time, as in October, we’ve trekked to the Lausanne, Switzerland metropolis to visit Jonathan’s parents, after stopping for the weekend in hilly Burgundy with a couple of friends.
The golden moment of that weekend was a morning I spent with the two older kids. We headed down a country road behind the house, overlooking wide, sprawling hills of grass and bright yellow canola, just now fully flowering. The wind was sharp and lively, but the sun was benevolent, and so we set out on a hunt—for what I didn’t know, but there is always something to find in spring in the countryside.
Before long, we had discovered that the dandelions were up and beginning to bloom, and that the lilac was spreading its fragrance all around. While the children rushed down the road on bike and scooter, I stopped frequently to greet old friends: the stinging nettle, dandelion, blackberries, clover, and wild onions. Soon, with a little playacting and genuine interest, I wooed the kids as well to the hedgerow and began to remark and explain the various plants. They picked specimens of many things and plopped them in a white plastic bucket we found by the toolshed.
All the way down to the bottom of the hill, it felt like paradise. I was firmly in the middle of my calling. My own marveling, sensing, moving, teaching, were all in action and serving to enthrall the three of us. We plopped down along a row of blooming trees full of birdsong to make dandelion chains, and the siblings were still delighted. So what if, not long after, as lunchtime approached, they began to fall apart, and by the time we reached the top of the hill again, I had a tearful two-year-old on my hip? It was worth it.
Here in Switzerland, I’ve had similar moments alone in the woods (my “work” this week consists of taking a two-hour walk each morning with no-longer-tiny Siloa slung on me in the scarf). Again, I’m strangely invigorated by the presence of wild plants. I remember how I fell in love with foraging in my back yard in Kansas City last year, making smoothies with young dandelion greens and salads with violets and their greens.
There’s something so thrilling to me about the richness and diversity of nature. I can hardly believe that some of the most nutritious plants on earth just happen all by themselves, in abundance seemingly impossible to deplete. Yet, it seems so right.
Let’s take the stinging nettle, for example. While it’s a plant you sometimes pay with pain to consume, it’s utterly worth it, being rich in vitamins A, C, and K, iron, calcium, and protein. Plus, it’s been clinically proven to help out with problems of arthritis, PMS, and urinary tract infections, along with many other illnesses.* And it tastes and cooks up like slightly more aromatic spinach.
So, we’re harvesting tons of free greens this week, and cooking them up in a couple different kinds of soup. The essentials in harvesting nettles are to either use sturdy gloves or scissors and some craftiness of gesture, and to use the youngest, tenderest leaves—a good strategy is to decapitate the top four to six leaves, if you have lots of them at your disposition. Should you find yourself in the woods, tool-less, you can try this technique with your bare hands.
To rid the nettles of their sting, you can certainly boil them for a few minutes in water (conserve the water and drink it with some honey for a healthful tisane; don’t you dare waste that goodness!). Or, if you’re going raw, you can supposedly soak them overnight in water; it also might work to totally blitz them with a food processor or juicer.
Some ways you can cook with this lively weed: soup, pesto, scrambled eggs, green smoothies, and juice. A little internet search will show you how to do any of these if you feel lost.
So, my friends, I commission us all to get out to the edges of our yards, fields, and forests, and make friends with the wild. Try a free sample. Embrace the nettle… er… maybe not literally.
*For more than you ever wanted to know about nettles, visit this site.
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