| MH 27, 442-443 |
For the big Spring Feast, nothing left over from the previous year would be eaten. (...) Every edible vegetable product they could find was collected. Birch and willow catkins; the young unfolding stems of ferns as well as the old rootstocks which could be roasted, peeled, and pounded into flour; the juicy inner cambium bark of pines and birch, sweet with new rising sap; a few purplish-black curlewberries, filled with hard seeds, growing beside the small pink flowers on the ever-bearing low scrub; and from sheltered areas, where they had been covered with snow, bright // red lingonberries, frozen and thawed to a soft sweetness, lingered with the dark leathery leaves on low tufted branches.
Buds, shoots, bulbs, roots, leaves, flowers of every description; the earth abounded with delicious fresh foods. Shoots and young pods of milkweed were used for vegetables, while the flower, full
of rich nectar, was used for sweetening. New green leaves of clover, pigweed, nettles, balsam root, dandelion, and wild lettuce would be cooked or eaten raw; thistle stalks and, especially, sweet thistle roots were searched out. Lily bulbs were a favorite, and cattail shoots and bulrush stems. Sweet, flavorful licorice roots could be eaten raw or roasted in ashes. Some plants were collected for sustenance, others mainly for the flavor they imparted, and many were used for teas. Ayla knew the medicinal qualities of most of them, and gathered some for her uses, as well.
On rocky slopes, the narrow tubular new shoots of wild onion were picked, and in dry, bare places, small leaves of lemony sorrel. Coltsfoot was collected from damp open ground near the river. Its slightly salty taste made it useful for seasoning, though Ayla gathered some for coughs and asthma. Garlicky-tasting ramson greens were picked for taste and flavor, as were tart juniper berries, peppery tiger lily bulbs, flavorful basil, sage, thyme, mint, linden, which grew as a prostrate shrub, and a variety of other herbs and greens. |
