What is purslane? Its a weed silly. An edible,wonderfully nutritional & useful weed. Common purslane or for you latin seekers "Portulaca Oleracea"-AKA: duckweed,
fatweed,pursley.It is packed with a powerful punch of a great many vitamins and minerals. "It gives you 6 times the vitamin E that spinach does and 7 times the beta carotene a carrot would! It is even high in those infamous Omega -3's! So off the healthy why's to the tasty ones. If eaten raw, it gives a light crunch and a touch of lemon to the palate."
That is a direct quote from Seabreeze organic farm. If you click on it, you will find yourself with an abundance more of information on this subject.
I had alot of fun with this one. It was not hard to make something yummy to put it in. So here are the garden/yard fresh items for the Pursalane summer salad
Flat leaf parsley, Spearamint, Purslane( in the white bowl), Cucumbers of any variety. We used a mix of regular garden variety and a japanese variety the neighbors gave us. You will also need kosher salt, black pepper, a few cloves of garlic, & All Natural yogurt- do not buy the average variety yogurt with all those chemicals. It defeats the purpose of this powerfully nutrtional salad. We buy the Dannon all natural vanilla yogurt. Read your ingredients and compare to mine. You will see why. Hold on, I am getting to the recipe. A story first..
On the site link I gave above, they have a similar recipe to this but a dear Jewish friend, vegetarian/yoga teacher served this to me and I loved it! She is a riot to know and her meals were as interesting as her life. Alot of life changes for me were made aftre meeting & befriending her. My desire of a more earthy life is because of her influence. It was always there but she brought it to the surface, dusted off the cobwebs and gave me a hand up. You know that song by the Beatles and the theme song for the sitcom Providence called "in my life"?
That was the song that was sung by a guy playing the guitar while I walked down the winding staircase of the Victorian home I married my husband in. I chose that song
because it reminds me of my life. She was in my wedding and you would think hearing it would bring images of my husband on that day. It does, but it also puts her in my thoughts. She encouraged me so much when i needed a friend the most. She no longer lives close andas most long distance friendships our communication faded over the years. Where I am going with this is everytime i see purslane, I picture her smiling face while she served me this exotic lunch salad.so this is what you will need exactly:
-2 laverage size cucumbers, peeled, diced into chunks and cleaned of all the seeds
-about half of a small garlic bulb
-a large handful of parsley chopped up good
-a very small handful of mint( I used about 5 big leafs of spearamint- hubby did not like the mint but did like the rest of the salad)
-a large handful of purslane (destemmed if you prefer no crunch) & chopped up tiny
-1 tspn. kosher salt and a few shakes of pepper
about 1 cup vanilla or plain all natural yogurt
Mix it all up and tast to see if you prefer more salt or pepper.
Lil' man ate as much of this as I did. Panda is still in her "picky" stage so not a bite from her.
When we were out picking beans at hilgerts she recognized some plants of purslane from our clipping time in the garden. I love when she retains the information I feed her like this. On another note, We have our calendula infusion on the front porch soaking in the sunshine, moonbeams, and star light. I should have my Calendula salve ready within the month. I read* here * to try adding a comfrey infusion for additional uses. Lots of nice information on that site about Calendula too. I do not have any Comfrey this year and will need to pay a visit to the herb cottage for a replacemant.
Our tomatoes are looking great! Despite Buddy eating the tops off half of my striped cavern tomato plants, I should have enough to feed us and some for giving away. Not as much of them as I wanted, but enough anyway. I dumped all the goat pen rakings in the front garden beds. I can tell a difference in the eggplants. They were so slow untill a week after their first "goat berry" treatment. Now the leaves are big and the flowers are turning into little white marbles.
This will be my first time growing or eating the cloud nine eggplant variety. I recieved the seeds through a swap as well as most of my tomato seeds. I have not sent my swap items for my tomato seeds as of yet. I did send out a package which came back since i put the wrong state on the address. So i thought i would make up a nice package of my goods freshly made to send off in the fall. Some of my salves will be in there along with a bottle of my wine-with a " not to be opened till" date of course. I'm rambling so I best be off now. Big day for the kiddies tommorow. We are going to a park that has permenate rides for 40 cents each. i will share more later. Sweet dreams....
~Tammie
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