Wild Harvest Soup

Let me tell you about the soup that I made after Harvest Day. Okay, that was about a month ago. I didn't wait a month to make the soup, I only waited a month to tell you about it.

At the time I harvested several gallons of various plants. I made a soup from about 6 cups of chickweed, a cup of violet leaves and a few dandelion leaves.

I made the soup by sautéing some onion, carrot and celery for a few minutes. I don't know why, but onion seems to taste so much better if you sauté it before you boil it. Another thing that I like to sauté a bit is fresh cracked black pepper. I've never been a big pepper fan, but frying gives it a rich, mellow taste.

To the vegetables. I added the chopped greens and wilted them. Then I added some chicken broth to deglaze the pan and transferred the whole thing into a stock pot.

After that, I just added a little more chicken broth, water, and a can of diced tomatoes. I seasoned the soup with salt and garlic, then a big handful of fresh sage from my garden, and some dried herbs like basil and thyme. I added some leftover rice and let it simmer for maybe 20 minutes (cooking the rice that long made it open up like a butterfly).



We had the soup garnished with some dillweed. It was good! A little weird, since the chickweed stems had a different texture than most "store bought" vegetables. They were crunchy and tender though, and mild. In the soup they looked like little green noodles.

Stephanie has a post on Lady's Thumb in her garden (and out of her garden). This is a wild edible that I haven't tried much yet! Check it out.

Harvest Day in the Yard

The wild plants are in peril of being mown down, so I harvested a lot of greens from the yard today. The bowl in the picture is about 16" across, so I got a pretty good amount, don't you think?

The plantain was big and healthy. Still no sign of a flower spike, so it should still be nice and tender.


Plantain, Chickweed and Violet leaves

I separated the plantain leaves from the rest of the harvest. I'm going to cook these by themselves in some new and exciting way. I'll let you know how it goes. There were enough to fill a quart zipper bag.

There was also a good amount of violet leaves. I probably got about a cup.

Most of the dandelions have gone to seed, but there were a few that hadn't flowered yet. I picked about 10 leaves.

I also picked about a gallon of lanky chickweed. There was a lot of plant material but not a lot of leaves. the stems are still tender and crunchy though, so I'll see how they work out in a soup with the violet and the dandelion.