During my morel hunting last Saturday, I noticed other wild edibles in the woods. There was winter cress, garlic chives (as a kid, we called this onion grass), watercress, and two highly invasive plants – garlic mustard and Japanese knotweed.
Being the somewhat nature-deprived city gal that I am, I took the opportunity of gathering some wild edibles while I was in the woods. I gathered all of the above except the Japanese knotweed. Lindsay took ownership of the garlic chives, and delighted in pulling them up to get the bulbs. We made scrambled eggs with chives that were delicious. The eggs, of course, were from our backyard chickens.
The garlic mustard looked hopelessly wilted by the time I got home, so I put it in a big bowl of cold water hoping to revive it. It seems as though nothing can kill garlic mustard, and it perked up in no time. I made a delicious pesto sauce, using 50% basil leaves and 50% garlic mustard leaves and buds. Now is the time to pick garlic mustard to eat, because after the flowers bloom, the plant becomes too bitter.
garlic mustard pesto
garlic chives
scrambled eggs with garlic chives
winter cress
watercress
In searching online for garlic mustard recipes, I learned more about the plant itself. It is a highly invasive plant that European settlers brought to plant in their kitchen gardens. It is a prolific producer of seeds and will blanket an area in a very short time, choking out all other native plants, including jack-in-the-pulpit, solomon-seal MOREL MUSHROOMS, and others. Wild animals don’t like to eat it, so it grows completely unchecked. And if that weren’t bad enough, the roots send out a chemical compound that makes the soil inhospitable to other plants. A very primitive form of chemical warfare.
There are many groups that host garlic mustard pulls. The amount of bags filled with the weed is astonishing. Unlike other weeds, you can’t pull this one up and just leave it on the ground. The flowers will have enough energy to produce seeds even after the plant has been uprooted. You have to pull it up by it’s roots and bag it.
Here’s a video that talks about the problems with garlic mustard. It helps you identify it and learn how to get rid of it. There’s even an annual Garlic Mustard Challenge, in which you help them log how many bags of garlic mustard have been pulled. Take a peek here.
We have a no-kill animal shelter in Brooklyn named Barc. I had always wanted to volunteer there, but never found the time. When I proposed going to Lindsay she was excited to go there and pet the kitties. I wasn’t sure how she would like it, but she did and suggested we go every wednesday after I pick her up from school. It has become a very nice ritual for us and the cats.
I have been pleasantly surprised by how well-cared for the animals are, and also how often they get adopted. There was a group of about 18 cats that came from the house of a little old lady who passed away. We fell in love with a couple of them. However, we have an elderly cat ourselves, who would hate company. That combined with the fact that hubby found out he’s allergic to cats, made us vow that no matter how cute the cats are, we wouldn’t bring any home with us. It’s been hard. Especially when you see…
KITTENS!!
I highly recommend doing some sort of volunteer work with your children. It’s very rewarding for all parties. It’s also nice for the kids to step outside of themselves and think about the lives of someone/something else.
I was listening to NPR on thursday and they had a segment on how video games can change the world. Hear it here. They had Jane McGonigal on who just came out with the book Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World. It was discussing how video games are so much more than the stereotypical shoot and kill ones. She talked about how she helped develop a fast-growing type of video games that turn the players towards positive social goals such as fighting depression, obesity, etc.
She mentioned a free game that is still available online that she developed for the World Bank Institute that challenges the players to address issues such as climate change. It is called Evoke and you can see it here.
Do you ever stop and think about all the mail-order catalogs that arrive at your home? Then you think about all those catalogs going to all your neighbors and friends and family and it seems overwhelming. Many companies try and use recycled paper, or paper from managed sources. However, there are still plenty of companies buying paper made from the trees of endangered forests in Canada, the US, etc. Peek here to read about a group called Forest Ethics and how they are trying to protect the endangered forests.
Besides recycling those catalogs, you can very easily stop them from coming to your home in the first place. In the past, if you wanted to stop the catalogs, you had to call each company, navigate through their phone system and convince the person on the phone to take you off their list. Not anymore! Catalog Choice has arrived to do all the work for you. For free I might add.
Just click http://www.catalogchoice.org/ to go to their website. You set up an account (they don’t sell your name to others, because that’s exactly what they are trying to help you with). Then you find companies in their database who are sending you unwanted mail. You just opt-out of receiving mail from them and Catalog Choice does the work contacting them.
Sometimes companies print up to 6 catalogs at a time, so it might take a few weeks/months before you stop receiving them. Just be patient and know that you are making a big difference. They even show you how many trees, pounds of greenhouse gas, pounds of solid waste and gallons of water you have saved by opting out of your particular catalogs. I’m a total sucker for those stats!
Happy Holidays! Please share your ideas for gifts for the planet.
New York City is the only city that doesn’t have a wildlife rehabilitation center. The good folks at Wild Bird Fund, Inc. are working to build one. Take a peek at this video to see some of the work they do in their make-shift quarters.
On their site, you can click to vote for them to get funding from a Pepsi grant, and to learn more about what they are doing.
This article is about a Texas man who, over two years, turns his yard from the typical St. Augustine grass lawn, to a wildlife oasis using native plants. He chronicles the transformation on his blog, which you can read here. One thing I like about the article is how the neighbors came to appreciate his work, even though initially they worried it “didn’t fit with the neighborhood.”
I can’t stress enough how important it is to plant species native to your area. They are particularly adapted to your climate, which means they don’t need supplemental watering or fertilizing. But even more importantly is how crucial they are to the survival of wildlife. Whenever we build new buildings, we lose more native plants. In their place, we usually plant non-native plants and grassy lawns. The wildlife that used to live there now has nothing to eat, because insects and other critters are often only able to eat one type of plant. Who cares about a bunch of bugs you say? Well the birds do. If the creepy crawlies die out, the birds don’t have anything to eat and they move on. Or they die out too.
People like Michael McDowell in the article above and many others are realizing this and planting native species, which builds islands of native habitats, and can have a great impact on helping wildlife.
One of the stranger things I’ve read today has been that human and animal hair and fur is being used to soak up the oil washing up from the BP spill in the Gulf. An organization called Matter of Trust is accepting donations of hair, fleece, and feathers to make into mats and booms to aid in the BP Gulf oil spill clean-up.
Go to this site for more information. Just think about how shipping hair over long distances is going to use oil though. This is probably a better local venture.
A few days have now passed since the panel discussion I participated in and I have learned a few things.
The first thing I learned was that I was naive. I didn’t do my research on my co-panelists. Even if I had, I never would have seen the fact that two of them were vegan as something that should cause alarm. I still believe the film was done by dedicated animal lovers and is a very valuable tool to help in stopping animal cruelty. It turns out that the organizer, Isa, was in the same boat as me.
The second thing I learned was that Isa was as surprised as I was when the panel got mean and accusatory. She and I have been exchanging emails since the event trying to figure out what happened. I questioned whether she purposely set me up, and she didn’t. So I am close to being as guilty as my co-panelists in terms of vilifying before understanding. Isa is one of the good guys who is organizing an impressive range of films, which I recommend attending if you are in NYC.
So I’m going to stop licking my wounds and move on to talk about all the great things people are doing to raise awareness.
Green Screens is the Lincoln Center film series organized by Isa. There are two upcoming events that look to be interesting. On July 22nd they will screen Climate Refugees by Michael Nash and on August 10th they will screen Vanishing of the Bees by George Langworthy and Maryam Henein. I had trouble finding information on the Lincoln Center website, but maybe you will fare better.
On the information table at the film screening I saw materials from The Meatrix. They are a group that is working to raise awareness about the inhumane conditions on factory farms. Take a peek at their website and here’s one of their videos below. They suggest reducing the amount of meat you consume (Meatless Monday), which is very reasonable. Westerners consume way more meat than is good for them (or the animals).
Certified Humane. I found a description of the Certified Humane program on the ASPCA’s website, so I am confident that it isn’t some bogus marketing ploy. They say, “The Certified Humane Certificate Program is an inspection, certification and labeling program designed to ensure that animals raised for food are treated humanely throughout the entire production process. Producers who display the Certified Humane Raised and Handled label on their products have treated their animals humanely at every stage of the food production process.” You can read more about it on their own website. You can even find sources of certified humane products near you on their website.
