As it matures, I’ll add better photos of the milkweed plant so you can identify it better.

6/13/09

  Depending on the book you read, almost all books on wild edibles will say this plant is almost uneatable.  I found out today for sure how wrong those books are.

  Most of the books I have say this plan is extremely bitter and requires at least 3 changes of boiling water (have to drop the plant into boiling water for it to work, if you put it in cold and then boil, it doesn’t work) to get rid of the bitter essence.  The only book that didn’t advise that was this one, Forager’s Harvest.

  So I decided since he seemed so enamored of how good of a green it was, I decided to try a bite.  I used part of the universal edibility test (I only nibbled a small bite, probably about the size of two erasers off the end of a wooden pencil in size) so if it was poisonous, I wouldn’t croak, just get sick to my stomach.  What I found was quite nice.

  It had a very mild flavor from what I could tell from such a small sampling.  I first touched the white milky sap to my tongue.  It had a watery taste that wasn’t unpleasant.  Then I nibbled the stem end of a leaf.  From that, I decided to leave it at that for now to see if I had any adverse effects, which after 18+ hours, I haven’t, so I’m going to try a larger sample.

  What little I tasted of it let me know that as long as I don’t get sick off of it, I could easily eat a bowl full of it with salad dressing and enjoy it.  Mix it in with some spinach and lettuce, and nobody would be the wiser, and that’s with it being raw.  I plan to try a larger sample within the following week or so.