It sounds like a trick question, when is a lake a lawn, but there is a non-tricky answer: When it is in Florida.

Regular followers of this writer know I am not a fan of lawns as an every day household item. I think lawns are great for national monuments, cemeteries, and golf courses. They are an irrational money pit for residential homes. Lawn grass is the second largest crop in America after corn, another grass. In fact, we grow more lawn grass than anyone else in the world. Compare that to Greece where lawns are nearly nonexistent. The only “lawn” I’ve ever seen there is around a small monument in Athens. Lawm is so rare you don’t see lawn mowers for sale. Goats do the job for free and give milk in return.

What does that have to do with lakes? First consider the lawn. A wide open space, barren of any wild growth. Take that same sterile mentality and apply it to water and you get a lot of Florida lakes, especially those in residential areas.

In Florida this is what a lake should look like: Lawn right down to the water’s edge, and then only water. No water plants are allowed to grow in the lake. No cattails, no pond lilies, no rushes. However, floating plastic ducks and geese are allowed to give the impression the lake is alive where as real waterfowl won’t land there because there is nothing to eat and no place to hide. One also usually sees a pump in the middle circulating the water to keep the dead lake from slipping into slime. Just as the lawns are sterile and artificial — think deer statues — so, too, are the lakes.

Left on their own the lakes will soon be alive with food, both plants and aquatic life. But at the same time the lakes will also slowly fill in and grow smaller. Over several decades the lake will become a marsh, and marsh-front property is not as profitable as “lake-front” property.

Deadly Orleander

When man moved off the farm into suburbia he quit growing food and began growing lawn and toxic ornamentals, as if he wanted to distance himself as far from living off the land as possible. Then he extended that same barren mentality to lakes. They have to be bodies of dead water, not oases of food and life.

The elimination of all but obedient nature on residential land and water seems perverse to me, the extension of some mental compulsion usually treated by professionals. I do not see the sense in maintaining plants that do not produce anything except expense. And preventing a lake from providing thee, me and the denizens of nature food and shelter seems environmentally unsound, a problem not a solution.

Two years ago, about 12 miles from me, a 10-acre residential lake with grass right to water’s edge blossomed in thousands of American Lotus (you can see those pictures in the article on American Lotus here.) This greatly offended the residents. How dare large yellow flowers grow in their lake. A plant exterminator was immediately hired — I actually talked to the president of the homeowners’ association — and the lake was chemically purged of that offending plant. Today the lake is barren again, save for the pump doing what nature used to do. But, the humans with their putting-green lawns of decapitated grass are happy with their sterile lake. Let’s hope they never are so hungry they are forced to eat their lawns. I wonder what view they might have then of all those offending, nutritious lotus?

This blog all started with hot dog relish.

Sardines on Toast, yum

I happen to like sardines on whole wheat toast with onions and mustard. (Regardless of what you think of that, go with me here for a while.)  Excepting the sardines, that’s close to the classic condiments one finds on ballpark hot dogs. So I wondered what that would all that taste like with some sweet hot dog relish tossed in.  That sets the stage.

I am also some one who avoids high fructose corn syrup. It’s part of my first personal food rule, avoid refined carbohydrates.  I think they are behind some disease trends. Let me show you some statistics from one study, Trends in Stomach and Pancreatic Cancer and Mortality in England and Wales, 1951-2000, published in 2007.

High Fructose Corn Syrup

The relative risk of dying from pancreatic cancer from 1951 to 1955 was 0.91. From 1976 to 1980 it was 1.11.  The risk now is 12.0. High fructose corn syrup was invented in 1957, was introduced into prepared foods and was widely used by 1977.  Is it a coincidence that the pancreatic cancer rate rose with the use of high fructose corn syrup? And in the 30 years since the risk has risen from essentially 1 to 12. Coincidence? Consider diabetes.

Government Food Guidelines Giraffe

The proliferation of diabetes, of which we have an epidemic, is in lock step with the invasion of that syrup into our foods and the wide-spread use of refined carbs. We are now seeing in children a form of diabetes that was usually confined to overweight older adults, in fact it was called Adult Onset Diabetes. Now it is type two diabetes. Ponder that. We are seeing a disease in children that was virtually nonexistent a few years ago. When you have an endemic change in a chronic disease it suggests something has changed to which we have not physically adapted. To me that says wide-spread changes in the food supply. Bottom line: I want sweet relish without high fructose corn syrup, HFCS.

Fattening Small Print

I must have looked kind of silly reading all of the relish jars in the supermarket. They all had HFCS, as I suspected they would. It’s easier to use — if you’re a commercial food manufacturer — and sweeter, less goes a long ways. And it is in everything. Try finding some ketchup/catsup without it, or canned beets, or creamed corn. The list goes on.  Like the fall from grace of transfats, which were once the darlings of kitchen chemists, I suspect some day HFCS (and refined carbs) will also fall after being linked to health pandemics. I, however, avoid HFCS today. Thus I now make my own relish and ketchup.

Chemists in the Kitchen

I have  two other personal food rules I try to follow. One is no more than five ingredients in a boughten food. When the food comes in a package, I count the number of ingredients. If it is more than five I usually pass unless most of them are named spices. Five ingredients gives you a medium such as water, vinegar or syrup, a few spices and minimally processed real food. Less is more. I like to read things like: Cabbage, water, salt.  Better: Beets, water. Best: Dried apricots. If the label reads like the stuff in the chemistry set I got for Christmas once, I skip it. You know what I mean; ingredient lists with a lot of words that start with: Mono-, tri-, methyl-, di-… et cetera… if I can’t pronounce it I don’t eat it. Avocado is about the longest word I consume.’

Of course real food is always better than something packaged. Where is the real food, besides out in the fields and woods? It’s usually around the edges of the grocery store. Produce, meats, and dairy are usually around three of the store’s four walls, the front being the fourth. Shop around the edges and you’ll do well. Be on the fringe and be healthy. Non-food is in the middle.

To be frank, a similar chemical problem exists in the field with wild edibles. Amaranth and PBC’s come to mind, pigweed and motor oil, persimmons and tire dust. In the supermarket I try to avoid food contaminated by “kitchen” chemicals, such as additives, dyes, and preservatives, in the wild I try to avoid edibles contaminated by commercial chemicals, such as pesticides, petroleum products, and compounds that will make you glow in the dark or have kids with five arms. The irony is wild food tends to be more nutritious than cultivated food but it is exposed to even worse chemicals.  It is a statement about our times that we have to be careful about chemical contamination in and out of the grocery store.

Back to nature Amish

I have a friend who is a chemist, and he’s fond of saying everything is chemistry, and he may be right. But the chemist in the kitchen does not have a good track record health wise, nor in the field starting with DDT (which is still out there in many long-lived plants such as lichen.)  I don’t want to sound like a Luddite, or a poster child for the Amish way of life, but I think many things of the past were better, particularly the food our ancestors ate. That brings me to my third personal rule, and I’ve mentioned it before, … if your great grandmother would not recognize it as food, don’t eat it.

Now, by avoiding high fructose corn syrup, chemicalized food and eating like my great grandmother, do I expect to escape the grim reaper? No, not at all. When ever you read a study that says such-and-such reduced cancer or heart attacks what that really means is the people didn’t get cancer or had a heart attack at the expected age. They still die of cancer and of heart attacks et cetera, just a few years later than usual. And that’s the goal. I’m here only once that I know of and I want to hang around as long as possible.

I think the more real food you eat and the less chemicals — where ever they are — the better off you are. So I avoid the the non-food of the grocery store and adulterated wild foods. Hopefully I can wander in the woods a little longer than usual, and be healthy while wandering.

We met by accident in the woods. I had hiked for a few miles already and he had just entered the trail.

Knife and Fire Steel

Whenever I go into the woods, or on water, I am prepared to stay 72 hours if need be. Why 72 hours? Almost everyone injured or lost today is found alive, or dead, within 72 hours.  So the goal is to have enough means and knowledge to sustain and or treat yourself if injured for three days. Even if I am going out just to take one picture I have all the important things with me to make three days in the woods uneventful, or a rescue possible should a rattle snake get me or a broken ankle.  I always have a back pack on, or stowed in the canoe or kayak. And always around my neck a good bushcraft knife and fire steel.

Soldier”s Creek, Seminole County, Fl.

My be-prepared list includes, beside cameras and the like, mosquito spray, extra watch, compass, a little fishing kit, some food, a small flash light, a couple of quarts of water, a poncho, and, if a long hike, a lightweight tarp and nylon hammock with bug net to suspend between trees, or crawl into on the ground.  I always carry several ways to make a fire and locally an elderberry spindle and basswood base can be used to make a bow drill fire. If I am in predator country I include pepper spray and a firearm. I also have a cell phone, a back up on a different network, and a GPS. While I can get by in the woods with next to nothing — after all that is what I teach — I prefer not to. Be prepared, even more important at my heart-attack age.

As I said, we met by accident. He was a young fellow in a short-sleeve shirt and slacks. His equipment was a camera. He was prepared to take pictures (and in fact later did take one of a 13-foot alligator the small stream of Soldier’s Creek.) Our paths crossed when I happened to slip on a sand-bagged bank. He asked me if I was all right. Only my dignity was injured though later I would be black and blue in selected spots. As he was pleasant, late 20’s-something, we walked along together. Like the fellow who was the last expert on the slide rule I like to tell younger folks about the edible flora around them. I also knew the trails through the swamp and he did not. I thought him completely unprepared, a potential accident in the making; yet another reason to hike in tandem.

When I first pointed out a wild edible he said he would never eat a wild plant and didn’t know anything about them. That seemed like a common response to me. Yet, as we walked along he was quite astute and knew about many other things regarding the woods, such as camping techniques. He was actually quite insightful and well-informed about many things. All in all he was the kind of young man you’d wish your 25-year-old daughter would meet and marry. After a few miles I found out why.

He was an Eagle Scout, and had bested his two older brothers who were also Eagle Scouts.  Now that was a family aiming kids in the right direction. It was very clear he was launched well, prepared for life by his scouting experience. What trouble me was that someone could become an Eagle Scout and not know any edible wild plants. He also did not know the toxic ones. When I pointed out poison ivy he said he had never seen it before… a boy scout who did not know what poison ivy looked like. He took a picture.

I realize scouting needs to change, keeping up with the times and all that. But, I would have thought wild foods would have been on the curriculum as much as a half a dozen ways to make fire.  An Eagle Scout who does not know even a few edible plants almost seemed, to me, a contradiction in terms. Edible wild plants was something I presumed we should have had in common. However, on reflection I realize the problem was with me, not him, or scouting.

When scouting started a century ago its purpose was to make good men out of boys, and back then engaging them in bushcraft was the at-the-ready means.  Said another way, the goal was to produce good men more than it was to go camping. Camping was just the then-contemporary vehicle to carry that out that cause. I presume the goal today is still as it was then; to produce good men out of boys. So maybe an Eagle Scout today does not have to be really good at knowing the wilderness. Maybe an Eagle Scout today does not have to know an edible plant. After all, my hiking companion turned out to be a very good young man. And that’s more important than eating a dandelion.

President-to-be Gerald Ford

He’s also in good company. Here are some well-known Eagle Scouts, a few of whom you might find surprising: Henry Aaron – baseball player, home run king; William Bennett, former Secretary of Education; Michael Bloomberg – Mayor of New York City; Bill Bradley, basketball star and U.S. Senator; James Brady, press secretary to President Reagan;; Stephen Breyer – U.S. Supreme Court Justice; Walter Cronkite, journalist and commentator; William C. DeVries, M.D., transplanted the first artificial heart; Michael Dukakis, governor of Massachusetts, presidential candidate; Gerald Ford, 38th President of the United States; Steven Fossett, aviator, flew solo nonstop around the world in a hot air balloon and in an ultralight airplane; James Lovell, astronaut; Richard Lugar, U.S. Senator; J. Willard Marriott, Jr., president, Marriott Corporation; Michael Moore, author and filmmaker; Oswald “Ozzie” Nelson, big band leader (made Eagle at age 13); Sam Nunn, U.S. Senator; Ellison Onizuka, Challenger astronaut; H. Ross Perot, Chairman, EDS Corp,

Ozzie Nelson, big band leader and father of singer Ricky Nelson

presidential candidate; Rick Perry, governor, state of Texas, presidential candidate; Mike Rowe, star of “Dirty Jobs”; Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense; Harrison Salisbury, Pulitzer Prize winning author; Jeff Sessions, senator from Alabama, Steven Spielberg, film director/producer; Jimmy Stewart, actor; John Tesh, TV celebrity and pianist; Sam Walton, founder, Wal-Mart; Edward O. Wilson – Pellegrino University Professor and curator of entomology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University; and Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr., admiral, Chief of Naval Operations.

I would call that a good track record.

Sea Kale

For a surprisingly simple question there is often a complicated answer. If it’s sea kale, then the answer is yes, top to bottom. It is edible. It is doubtful anyone has ever died from eating sea kale. If the plant is poison hemlock, then no it is not edible. You’ll be dead before it leaves your stomach for the small intestine. Between these two are all the other plants.

Dick Deuerling, 1990, co-author of “Florida’s Incredible Edibles”

I had a foraging friend, Dick Deuerling, who passed in July, 2013, at at 92.  When it came to wild plants he would say “I only eat the good stuff.”  Well… like the word “edible” what is “good”? And how many wild plants are edible, and good and how many are toxic? It depends upon the definitions.

If you were to look at an average 20 acres on an average place on earth with average rainfall and temperatures you might find an average of 5 to 10 percent of the species edible. Shall we split the difference at 7.5%. This will vary with more edibles at the equator and much less in the tundra but nearly every plant in the tundra is edible. It is far more efficient to learn the edible plants than the non-edible ones. Then there is the issue of poisonous ones. Again it depends upon the definition (though I have read there are no poisonous plants in the tundra.)

Mrs. Freddie, a Hupa, leaching Acorns

I can remember the first time I heard someone refer to acorns as poisonous. To me they were just bitter because of tannic acid. Yet, if you did manage to eat a lot of acorns with tannic acid you would be sick, probably not deathly sick but ill nonetheless. (Incidentally, man has not been totally successful at breeding the bitterness out of the acorn.) So there is a range with “toxic” plants, those that make you mildly ill to those that can kill you within a few minutes, seconds if refined. Which brings me to a plant like the Urena lobata.

Urena lobata, famine food, medicine

I debated whether I should to put the U. lobata on my site or not, whether to do a video on it or not. Even when cooked the young leaves have disagreeable texture. It is like eating sandpaper that turns to sand and then is finally swallowable. Edible, nutritious, but not good or tasty. Yet it sustains people and its roots are very medicinal. So I put it in the famine food category.

Let’s take this a step further. Pokeweed is a good example of a common plant which if prepared incorrectly will kill you. There is no way to sugar-coat that reality. Harvest it wrong, prepare it wrong and you can easily be dead. Yet, it is a delightful green of spring when prepared correctly. It is September as I write and I still have poke in my freezer from last April.

Last night I read that the American Natives showed settlers how to cook pokeweed. I’d like to know if that is a fact or an assumption. The natives called the plant “red” because of the color of its stalk. They also used it medicinally. Eating it was a different issue. The Alabama tribes noted that white settlers ate the young leaves but the Alabamans did not. So, why doubt whether the American Indians taught the white man how to cook the pokeweed?

Did Native Americans Eat Pokeweed Before European Metal Pots?

Poke should be boiled at least twice to get rid of the toxins. Boiling has not been among man’s cooking choices for too long. Before metal most boiling was done in dug out logs or skin bags with hot rocks. In North America clay pots for boiling didn’t come into being until about 2,000 years ago. No matter how done boiling was a laborious affair usually reserved for big game. Cooking pokeweed, which required two boilings for very little caloric payoff, was doubtful. Pokeweed as a food did not come into its own until humanity had a relatively quick and easy way to boil water. Metal pots was the foremost request the Europeans had from the native population. If natives did not boil much before that it would mean that pokeweed has been a “food” for man for only a split second of his history. Said another way, if we were hunters and gathers from 10,000 years ago we probably would not be eating pokeweed, or cashews, or tapioca, or cassava or even many beans. In fact, we probably were not eating dandelion tops — too bitter — but were roasting the roots in the fire.

Thus we eat many wild foods that were not eaten long ago in the absence of boiling. We also eat a lot of contemporary plants there were not food in the past: Orange carrots, sweet apples, red peppers, cauliflower…tomatoes with flounder genes…. the list is long. We eat a lot of things — wild and cultivated — we did not eat 10,000 years ago. While perhaps not toxic is this food we were designed or evolved to eat? Might our ancestral diet be important? 

That all makes the question like “is this plant edible?” rather tough in many cases. A few are clearly yes, a few are clearly no, and in between there there can be a lot of fog. What about a tomato with a flounder gene? (So it can withstand cold better.) Has it been eaten by large numbers of humans for many centuries to prove it is safe? How about the pokeweed for that matter? Is there a higher cancer rate among pokeweed eaters like those who boil and can fiddleheads? Pokeweed has mitogens and those promote cell division. Then again, I eat poke only a few times every year, where as I can eat a fish tomato daily, or a diet soda, or processed cheese food with more additives than a Christmas chemistry set.

What about the foods that are considered really safe, a yellow pepper for example. How long has it been around? It actually comes from a rather toxic family. How many people have to eat it over how many years to prove it’s actually safe?  Much produce is now hybrids, meaning if man did not make them they would disappear off the grocery shelf. Nature rarely hybridizes. Are these hybrids really safe? Indeed, most of the produce in a produce section was not around in its current form a few centuries ago. They are not as estranged from the human diet as the fish tomato but they are not what our ancestors ate. And if that is not confusing enough we get products taken off the market as toxic when that is very doubtful. Sassafras is an excellent example. The amount of safrole in an old fashion glass of root beer was less harmful than the alcohol in a glass of real beer. Yet safrole is now highly controlled. In short, our foods are highly manipulated, and what is good may not always be good and what is bad may not always be bad. I am mighty doubtful of the chemist in the kitchen.

Now when I am asked is that plant edible I say humans have been eating it for a long time, or a short time, almost no time, or not at all. Occasionally I can say they ate it in the past but not today.  The longer I study plants, and forage, and the more I eat and the older I get, the more I am convinced how they ate thousands of years ago, and what they ate, was better and healthier than today.