Wild Mint

Do not read while eating. If you do, be sure to have some Wild Mint on hand.

"the most useful sources of illumination are not always holy books, revered dogma… They might also be serendipitous anomalies that erupt into the daily routine and break the trance of ordinary awareness." –Rob Brezny, Astrologer.


Wild Mint is like dog crap in exactly seven ways, you will be surprised to learn:
1) When you step on it, the smell immediately fills your nostrils,
2) the smell is unlike anything else in this odiferous earth,
3) it can be discovered in convenient places the world over,
4) its history is intertwined with ours from the dawn of time,
5) in large doses, it could be dangerous to pregnant ladies,
6) it comes out when the snow melts, and&
7) accidental discovery can "break the trance of ordinary awareness."

That's a lot of similarities to dog crap for an herb that is among the world's most popular flavorings of all time!

You will not be shocked to learn that dog crap and wild mint don't have anything else in common.

For instance, dog crap is not named after a naiad, a river nymph who was transformed into a plant by Persephone just when the naiad Menthe was about to get it on with Hades and thereby inappropriately sweeten the odors of the netherworld.

In addition, dog crap is not globally known throughout all recorded history as a tea herb good for sloshy and icky stomachs and raw and painful throats, as is mint.

Dog crap attracts flies and rodents, whereas mint is said to repel these pests. 

A lover's mouth that smells like dog crap? Turn Off!  A lover's mouth that smells like mint? Turn On!  Apparently this is not a new concept.  Ms. Kershaw, author of Edible and Medicinal Plants of the Rockies, notes that people have freshened their breath and bodies with mint since males began finding it necessary to seduce their females, as opposed to whatever went on before. 

I have stumbled across this herb in Deary, Cottonwood, and Pullman,  beneath our apple trees and along rail road tracks.  Each time, the place has been wet, with a magical feel.  If I were a water nymph, I would haunt these enchanting spots myself. 

There are three types of mint:   Wild/Field mint, Peppermint, and Spearmint.  Most of these have apparently circumnavigated the globe, co-mingling, procreating and naturalizing, likely due to their seductively smelling bodies.

Wild Mint grows 8 inches to 2 feet tall.  It's thin velvet leaves with sharp, toothy edges, grow in pairs on opposite sides of their four-sided stems.  Purple tinted flowers grow in clusters at the leaf axils.

Many plants may look like Wild or Field Mint when they are young: nettle, false dead nettle, and perhaps Wild Bergamot (none of which would be a deadly mistake).  However, only Wild Mint will smell like mint.  And I don't know of anything dangerous that smells like mint but isn't.  If in doubt, crush it between your fingers.  My apologies if it turns out to be nettle.

What to do with Wild Mint?  Eat it right then, take it home for fresh mint tea, dry it for tea later.  For drying: harvest before it flowers, hang upside down in a dry place with decent ventilation and no direct sun until dry yet still green, then store in a jar in the dark.  My favorite dinner recipe for my cache of Wild Mint is Moosewood Restaurant New Classics' Thai Eggplant and Tomato Salad on Pasta.  Mint and Pasta? Yes!

The flavor of Wild Mint is harsher than domesticated mint, and I would guess that intensity varies with location.  Experiments may be necessary to find your stash's best quantities.

Although bulk mint from the co-op is hardly expensive, Wild Mint holds the thrill of discovery, a connection to the wild earth beneath our feet, and a close encounter with the seductive naiad Menthe.  You could just buy some, but why cheat yourself?

Wild Mint is something I look forward to stepping on.  These refreshing leaves are the "serendipitous anomaly" I Want to stumble in to.  Your dog's crap? Not so much. 

Miner's Lettuce

You thought you knew her. For well over a decade you munched on her juicy green leaves while strolling in the woods. On spindly 3-12" stalks she holds her succulent leaves like a waitress. Clusters of delicate, white-flowers centered artfully upon the thick green platters. Her leaves seem to grow around the flowers in varying stages of circle, with possible points, like a square merging with a circle. You thought you knew her.

With an unimaginative name like Miner's Lettuce, she couldn't have been very complex, very interesting. You hear her name and the history is obvious: miner's ate it, probably 49'ers as those are the miners our imaginations stock. Why did those 49er's name this lettuce?

Whether you’re a miner, a sailor or some other unwashed, hairy, single male back in the day, you either got Vitamin C or scurvy, take your pick. In this purported favorite of miners, the Vitamin C is plentiful, whether fresh in a salad or boiled for a spinach "substitute". And that's it, end of story. "My darling Clementine, Miner's Lettuce is as simple as that," you say.

And then one March day, East of the Cascades where annuals actually die and are born again (rather than in the moist West where everything seems to live forever), someone points to some new weed in the alley and says, "Look! the Miner's Lettuce is finally out!" And because you are absolutely sure that you Know Miner's Lettuce and this is Not it, an argument ensues that ruins the sunny, muddy spring stroll, and leaves you angry and humiliated.

You wonder of the Miner's Lettuce, "How could she have deceived me for so long?" But the truth is that you never bothered to know the whole story, the whole plant. You made your assumptions early on and you were happy with them.

What you saw in the shady, wet alley was this: it was a flat plant, hugging the earth. The stem and leaves were brown, not the Kelly green of the Miner's Lettuce you know (but perhaps sometimes it Is green when it's new, you just don't know anymore). The stems were laid out like bike spokes, each individual one tipped with a spade shaped leaf. It looked like an ancient call to the four directions and all parts in between. It looked like a compass to find true bearings. It looked like a fancy clock saying it's time, all the time. It looked not anything like the slender late spring Miner's Lettuce, slouching beneath the Pines and Cedars, with thick square-round leaves along the stem. That's why you held your ground. That's why you refused to believe your eyes and your mentor, and everything else you take with you to make sure that you have the right plant before you eat it.

Eventually, maybe over the course of a year or a lifetime, you pry your mind open. Perhaps this is Miner's Lettuce, too. Perhaps it Is possible that a plant can look so completely different in early spring than it does in late spring. You didn't know it's secret name, Claytonia (or Montia) perfoliata, so perhaps there are other things you don't know about her. And perhaps, you don't know everything.

Indeed, this flat brown March weed is Miner's Lettuce. Once the pride is swallowed and the mind accepts this new information, the delightful surprise of learning brings a thrill to your spirit. You long to know more; you want the whole story.

You want to know if maybe spinach is the real substitute. Or if there are other miners involved from years other than 1849. But the trail's gone cold now. Everyone assumed the obvious about Miner's Lettuce; you haven't been alone. Information is lost. You will never know who else ate this lettuce, how they ate it, and what ancient names it was called by. "Indian" lettuce is the only clue left. The simplicity of the story lulled everyone into complacency.

Miner's lettuce is now more mysterious than you ever dreamed and it thrills you. The alley looks fresh and carpeted with adventure. The world is new and expansive. The earth holds secrets for you to uncover. Open up and come outside, again. Spring is here.

Just a Dandy Lion

"Whether the weather be fine
Or whether the weather be not,
Whether the weather be cold
Or whether the weather be hot,
We'll weather the weather
Whatever the weather,
Whether we like it or not." –Anon

Spring on the Palouse is an unsettling series of steps and missteps, mixed in with a lot of winter, which, we pray, will eventually lead us to summer. The arrival and readiness of our wild spring greens is less a calendarial matter and more an event determined by weather, erratic and labile. The key to getting your spring greens is to wander outside, keep your eyes open, and pay attention to the earth beneath your feet.

Because you will not want to eat dandelion greens too late in the spring, I'll tell you about them first: Dandelions are the iconic, quintessential hippy edible green; the emblem, the family crest, of the VW bus, bell-bottomed set.

Identification review:
"do-you-like-butter?" yellow flowers, one tops each stem, during the warmer half of the year.

Break the stem and in-edibly vile white milk flows: a rumored wart remedy, applied topically.

Leaves, lobed like a variety of ocean waves: sharp teeth, deep curves, no curves. Hairless under-leaf, except for the spine, which is (depending on which source you turn to) either hairy or hairless.

You may have tried dandelion greens before and tasted something like you'd imagined poison: satanic bitterness. Whereas, they Are considered a bitter green, the key to getting your dandelion greens is to get them early and to use a flavorful salad dressing. The greens of dandelions are offensively bitter once the plant flowers. When you get used to the ferocious taste of Dandy-Lion greens, you'll know exactly when their bite is too harsh.

Dandelions should not be hard to find, despite civilization's best efforts at eradication. You will not need to go on safari in your hunt for these lions, just check in alleys, gardens, and yards. In early spring their yellow, lions-mane flowers are not yet out, so look for a circular spread of leaves in the grass. As always, identify your prey with certainty. Not all green growing things are edible.

Collect them by the handful from relatively clean places. If they look funky or diseased, don't pick them. One lawn expert recently told me that Round-Up was so safe, he could drink the stuff, and I thought maybe he should. Lesson: herbicides are an entrenched institution so keep an eye out, okay? At any rate, wash your healthy looking collection. Dry in a salad spinner. In the alternative, wrap in a dish-towel, go outside, swing your arm in a circle like a cartoon winding up for a pitch: the human salad spinner. Not only is it showy, it's also works! Sort out the yellow leaves and the grass.

Dandelion greens are perfect in a salad, mixed with other wild greens, spinach, or grocery greens and a honey mustard dressing. They are a good spinach substitute in pasta sauce, pasta noodles, green curry, lasagna, soups, etc., etc. They can be wildly bitter, especially in recipes calling for greens by the pound, so mix them with milder greens. You can store them in your fridge for a few days. Don't bother drying them.

Dandelion greens are considered very high in Vitamin A, Vitamin C, potassium and calcium. They are high in iron, B-vitamins, thiamine, niacin, and liver-lover choline. The leaves are also a filling 19-32% protein(Healing Wise by Susun S. Weed).

Susun Weed quotes William E. Dodge from 1870 noting that the Digger and Apache "scour the country for many days' journey in search of sufficient to appease their appetites. So great is their love for the plant (dandelion leaves), that the quantity consumed by a single individual exceeds belief."

I can't say I'm as madly in love with dandelion greens as the Digger and Apache supposedly were, but I do regard them with high esteem and reverence, devouring exhilarating quantities each spring. I'll be in my Birkenstocks, going no further than my neighborhood-nuisance lawn, gathering bowl-fulls of bracingly healthy dandelion greens, and thanking the earth for her persistent, under-appreciated Dandy-Lions.