Day 1 – $50/week grocery challenge – wild weeds chicken salad

Welcome to the first day of spring!  And to the first day of the $50/week grocery challenge.

I would like to thank readers for their comments and participation in the August energy challenge.  The blog posts from that challenge are still online.  Alternatively, you can chat with others on the Frugal Dare to Millionaire Facebook group. I am learning so much from comments and feedback – thanks to everyone’s comments I have saved hundreds of dollars on my electricity bills!

Throughout the September challenge, I will post a few times a week. Not every day.  The idea will be to give you some insight into how I do the $50/week challenge.  The first one (today) is a tad controversial. Perhaps.  You see, I am a believer in urban foraging.

I am slowly learning how to identify edible weeds.  At first, I was terrified I would eat something poisonous. I mean, people have died agonizing, painful deaths in Canberra from eating golden mushrooms. (No golden mushrooms in my recipes – I promise.)

But once you know how to spot edible weeds, you won’t mistakenly eat anything bad.  Most things growing in your garden are probably okay in any case.  If you haven’t sprayed weed killer on them there is nothing toxic about them.  And many are extremely good for you – super foods in fact.  Commercial lettuce types had their beginning as wild weeds – many are from the same family.

One of my favourite resources is the Facebook group about edible weeds and other useful survival information.  You can post pictures of plants you find that you might want to eat but are unsure of.  Or even better, get a friend or expert to show you.  If you are in Canberra, food blogger Susan Hutchinson will again conduct an urban foraging walk that includes edible weeds on 7 October.  I am still learning so much about edible weeds and urban foraging from her.  She has been living on less than $50 a week for a lot longer than me, and has some amazing culinary creations. Yes, it can be done.

Many lettuce like weeds are at their best in early spring, especially when there is enough rain.  Last year I fashioned a simple chicken salad a mixture of homegrown lettuce, rocket and garden weeds, and a dressing made from locally grown (gifted) lemons.  All of the greenery was sourced from my garden (I love my apartment, but reading this made me miss my old house so much.)  I tossed in whatever was in my fridge that I wanted to use up. I’m sure you will have some creative variations.

You could use entirely foraged greens for this, or perhaps mix in a few supermarket lettuce varieties if you like. It is really up to you:)

Ingredients
2 cups of foraged greens
1 to 2 chopped sundried tomatoes
Olives
1 chicken thigh fillet, grilled (or use some leftover BBQ chicken)

Salad dressing
1 dessertspoon of lemon juice
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
3 dessert spoons of olive oil

Method

First forage for some salad greens to add to some more conventional varieties.  This can include:

Chickweed

This is very common in garden beds in Canberra. It has small white flowering flowers and once you know what it is, it is easy to spot.

Mallow

Choose the very young, tender leaves. I usually like this stir-fried, but in this wet weather, it is tender enough to eat as it is.

Dandelion greens

Pick small leaves before the flowers form – any later and the leaves become very bitter.  Dandelion leaves are a powerful liver cleansing tonic.  Add sparingly to your salad if you are not used to them given their strong bitter taste. (I personally like the bite of bitterness, but not everyone does.)

Milk thistle (aka sow thistle)

This weed is often confused for dandelions.  It doesn’t matter too much because you can eat both.  What I call Scottish thistle is also often referred to as milk thistle. You can also eat Scottish thistle raw, but you need to cut off the prickles with scissors.  (I prefer to cook them instead, which softens the thistles).  I don’t like the taste as much so only used sparingly.

Poppy greens

The garden in my old house was filled with wild poppies in mid spring that self-germinated. I ought to have gotten rid of them but I liked how pretty they look. You can eat the leaves of the poppy when the plant is young, preferably before buds have formed.  The opiate effect of poppies is well known, but the young leaves are okay so long as picked early.  They have a lovely nutty flavour.

Wild lettuce (Lactuca Virosa)

I added a few of these to my salad, and love them as a salad green in winter.  But I find they are already starting to get a bit tough and bitter for salad consumption.