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What is the strangest old timey vegetable you have eaten

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zimmerstutzen

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About once a year, I get some Romanesco at a farmer's market over in the next county. Bizzarre looking stuff, steam it and add butter and chopped bacon and grated asiago cheese over it. Cultivated in Italy by the 16th century. Looks a bit like a green conch shell made out of broccoli.
 
Prairie turnip, wild tomatillos, wild asperigas, cat tail root, I can’t think of any thing unusual I’ve gotten in a farmers market but had a lot of heirloom veggies.
 
Not sure how "old timey" but the older generations on the Sicilian side of my family brought us up eating a lot of things that used to be looked at as strange then, and now cost a fortune. Wild picked broccolirab (spelling?), artichokes (the whole thing not just pickled hearts), and a variety of other "weeds" (some brought from the old country, probably illegally now as invasive species). Not vegetables but we ate a lot of mussles instead of clams and I remember my grandmother and great grandmother telling how people would give them grief and turn up their nose as the family picked them off the rocks.
 
dandelion jam and wine, persimmons, wild carrot and ramp (great pickled also) and dock greens. also good sunchokes but man give a fella gas to blow the windows out.
 
I don’t eat poke. I will tell you because it’s poisonous, the fact is boiled greens taste pretty nasty to me.
Apples contain cyinide, as do almonds and that doesn’t bother me. Blow fish is sold in Japanese food markets so poisonous food doesn’t stop everyone, but it’s a good excuse to not eat it.
Morrels grow well in this area. I never felt comfortable eating them. Then working in an ICU I took care of a women in her fifties at the time. She grew up in the ozarks and had picked morels for fourty years. Then she picked a bad one. It almost killed her. This was over twenty five years ago. I’ve not eaten a wild mushroom since.
 
Since garden vegetables have been bred and selected for desirable traits for hundreds of years none are really "old timey" ...So that pretty much leaves you to foraging....

And even that changes with geography...
 
My father picked and brought home all kinds of wild mushrooms and fungi. We always waited 36 hours after he ate some before we would eat it. He would get some really tasty orange fungi that looked a bit like thick orange peels. Really good. I don't pick any mushrooms. One of my college professors died foraging "shrooms"

I have spotted some Amanita Muscaria at the end of my property. I understand it is illegal to be caught picking them. Put them in your pasta sauce and visit Italy without leaving the table.
 
Yeah me too, I went over the top to make a point. Lots of folk eat poke but I won’t touch it, it’s poison but only part of it. Same thing with morels I just won’t take the chance, silly as it is I plan a trek later this month alone and in the tall timber. So my idea of living safe is just based on if I want to do it or not. :wink:
 
a bit of long winded here but possibly vital info.
In January '08 I was diagnosed with stage 3 cancer which if you know much about it right serious. things looked grim for me. I went for the 48 radiation treatments and took a small greenish pill 2x day. a friends wife is Columbian and talked with me about a naturopath she knew also from Columbia. talked with the lady she sent me a zip bag of apricot pits which contain the poison cyanide. they taste slightly sweetish and almond. to be effective I had to eat enough of them slowly 2x day to get slightly nauseous which was around 8-10 of them. all I know is that I went through all treatment and was free of cancer 2 months later, still am.
I had a bunch of those left over, maybe 2 cups which I placed back and forgot about for years. I came across them digging through my cabinet and tossed out back about 1/2 of them. out back my place is overrun which small and sometime large (bear) critters. the next morning I looked out and the largest she-coon I've ever seen was laying there dead. she had eaten most of the pits, had puked (could see the ground pits in it) and crapped out a lot. got a right nice hide but didn't care to risk the meat (coon is fine eating IMO, caught around farm patches the best). I've learned that peach pits also contain cyanide so be careful with these around critters.
 
Blizzard of 93 said:
a bit of long winded here but possibly vital info.
In January '08 I was diagnosed with stage 3 cancer which if you know much about it right serious. things looked grim for me. I went for the 48 radiation treatments and took a small greenish pill 2x day. a friends wife is Columbian and talked with me about a naturopath she knew also from Columbia. talked with the lady she sent me a zip bag of apricot pits which contain the poison cyanide. they taste slightly sweetish and almond. to be effective I had to eat enough of them slowly 2x day to get slightly nauseous which was around 8-10 of them. all I know is that I went through all treatment and was free of cancer 2 months later, still am.
I had a bunch of those left over, maybe 2 cups which I placed back and forgot about for years. I came across them digging through my cabinet and tossed out back about 1/2 of them. out back my place is overrun which small and sometime large (bear) critters. the next morning I looked out and the largest she-coon I've ever seen was laying there dead. she had eaten most of the pits, had puked (could see the ground pits in it) and crapped out a lot. got a right nice hide but didn't care to risk the meat (coon is fine eating IMO, caught around farm patches the best). I've learned that peach pits also contain cyanide so be careful with these around critters.
https://www.webmd.com/vitamins-sup...ntid=1190&activeingredientname=apricot kernel
How does it work?

Apricot kernel contains a toxic chemical known as amygdalin. In the body this chemical is converted to cyanide, which is poisonous. There was interest in using apricot kernel to fight cancer because it was thought that amygdalin was taken up first by cancer cells and converted to cyanide. It was hoped that the cyanide would harm only the tumor. But research has shown that this is not true. The amygdalin is actually converted to cyanide in the stomach. The cyanide then goes throughout the body, where it can cause serious harm, including death.

I certainly would not attribute your cure to eating apricot pits.

In other words - stay away from quacks pushing natural/miracle cures. At best, do nothing, at worst, will kill you...
 
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The first settlers at Jamestown survived by eating acorns in the "starving " year.
 
I’ve had acorn flour patties( bread). You crush the acorns to meal then leach out the tannin with lots of water wash. You don’t get it all out and it has a bitter hickory/black walnut like flavor you make up a pattie then fry or bake near a fire. Lots of calories and high protein high fat, some what bitter.
 
The lower portion of cattail leaves are tasty as well. Played with the tubers in an effort to extract the starchy flour.

Wild asparagus

Dandelions

Inner pine/fir bark

Arrowleaf balsamroot seeds

Yew berries

An assortment of wild berries

Puffballs and Shaggy Mane mushrooms (Not really vegetables as most people define them)
 
Black Hand said:
Yew berries
Please keep in mind only the red fleshy portion is edible. The SEEDS ARE TOXIC!

Tried the berries once out of curiosity with no ill effects, but would rather eat things that don't have the potential to kill me....
 
A friend I have known over 40 years declined conventional medicine and went to a Kansas City herbalist for her cancer treatment. She died two weeks ago. :( I do what my doctors (real M.D.s) tell me to do for my health care.
 

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