Summertime

Early each summer, the onions are ready to harvest.  These early onions are the sweetest ones, you won't have to make sure everybody is eating them, you know, like garlic. 

 Allium cepa, or onions, have been traced back to 5000BC, the remnants found alongside dates and figs.  The Egyptians cultivated them 2000 years later and fed them, along with radishes, to the workers building the pyramids.  They have been an important food source and potent medicinal plant since then.  Quercertin, found in onions, is being touted today as an anti-inflammatory and cancer fighter.  Christopher Columbus brought them aboard the Hispanola to the New World, but found they were already being eaten in wild form by the Native Americans.

 They are easy to grow and when the tops dry, pluck them from the earth and let them cure for a couple of days.  Bunch and hang them in a shady spot.  It would be perfect to store them in a root cellar but mine hang  by old baskets in my garage.  They will still be edible by Thanksgiving if I have any left.

Most importantly, if you cry while slicing an onion, if your eyes nearly burn out of their sockets, hold them under running water or submerged in a basin of water while slicing.  Also, chill beforehand.

Wilding

Looking for wild edibles has never been more popular than it is now.  Even the hoity-toity TOWN AND COUNTRY magazine recently published a spread about it.  The bible for those whom like to find wild edibles is STALKING THE WILD ASPARAGUS.  Euell Gibbons was definitely before his time.  For instance, did you know that all parts of the day lily are edible?  More about this at the bottom, for it is very important for our children and grandchildren.

I found these beautiful mushrooms out by the woods yesterday.  They were various sizes, but these two beauties were at least 10 inches across.  I have never seen these around here before.  Upon further examination, I tore one apart.  Though there are gills, they are not seen from the underside of the fungi.

The underneath side was covered in pores.  

The entire mushroom looked like a giant hamburger bun.

I researched these fungi on Google and videos on youtube and have decided it is a King Bolete mushroom.  These are (besides truffles) the most desirable wild mushrooms out there.  They are hunted worldwide for their flavor and rarity.  So, did I cook it and eat it.  No!  You should never eat a mushroom that you are not 100% certain about.  As an aside, Euell Gibbons says that native Americans didn't eat wild mushrooms, probably because they knew of the possibility of poisonings.

Time to segue into why the whole wild edible thing is important for your children and grandchildren.  In just a generation, we have lost the ability to discern what is edible in nature.  If you read the MIT study a couple of weeks ago (Massachusetts Institute of Technology - and they don't come any smarter than they are), about the coming global economic collapse by 2030 and the depletion of the world's natural resources, i.e. energy, water etc. They even talk of millions dying, but I won't get into that. 2030 is 17 years away, that is unless there is the perfect storm; a trifecta of pandemic, natural disaster and/or war, which could make it happen sooner.  I don't even want to see what a super great depression would be like.  But, I am going to start making some changes; preparing as I am able.  Not like the nuts on National Geographic channel prepping for whatever. I do think it would be prudent to plant gardens, fruit and nut trees.  What do you think? Little Red Hen?   Look at Greece right now, the run on banks and if you have a 401K, it is going to be affected. Texas and the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations are suing the state of Oklahoma right now over water rights. The rumblings are there and it would be foolish to ignore them.

Spring Potatoes

Dug around in the potato bed today and voila!  I bet I planted 10 different varieties and have no idea what kind these specimens are.  I plan on canning the small ones when they are ready to be dug in June.  As large as some of these are, I'm afraid to wait until June.  My husband has requested new potatoes in cream sauce for these first ones.