A few years back, if you had of told us we would gather the greens for our salad by not only walking to the veggie bed and picking lettuce and parsley, but by scouring the garden looking for dandelion, chickweed, herb robert, plantain, nasturtium and other plants often considered ‘weeds,’ we would have given you a rather strange look! Well, they say 'never say never', and weeds have taken a central place in our salad bowl, as we’ve begun to appreciate:

• How nice they can taste in a salad
• That many ‘wild’ plants contain valuable nutrients in higher concentrations that cultivated varieties
• How helpful it is to have weeds fill up a salad bowl when there is little lettuce, parsley and other salad greens in the veggie beds
• That eating a large diversity of plants (especially leafy greens) makes for super healthy humans!

Michael Pollen’s book 'In Defence of Food', which we’re currently reading has reinvigorated our love of weedy salads, which was first sparked by Isabell Shippards brilliant guide 'How can I use herbs in my daily life'. Isabells book, written in Australia, is by far the best herb book we’ve come across and has lots of helpful, practical ideas about how you can eat and use these valuable plants. It’s also really good at explaining how to ID the plants, with detailed descriptions and photographs (you really don’t want to be eating petty spurge rather than chickweed!).

On the weekends, we indulge in a big salad for lunch – an eclectic collection of whatever greens we can find in the garden, plus some extra yummies thrown in. Today our salad was something like:

Garden Greens

- A small handful of parsley

- A small handful of lettuce

- A handful of chickweed

- 4 big dandelion leaves

- 5 nasturtium flowers and a couple of young leaves

- 8 Herb Robert leaves

- A few sprigs of yarrow

- stick of celery

Extras

- 4 cherry tomatoes (our cherry tomato bushes are still hanging in there!)

- Small handful of fried halumi

- Small handful of raw cashews

- Small handful of olives

Dressing

- 5 big sprigs of thyme

- Juice of 2 small lemons

- Drizzling of olive oil

 Has anyone else ventured beyond the vegie bed to fill their salad bowls?