Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Thistle=celery

My garden has been neglected for the past couple of years due to an injury and now I am faced with more pain in trying to clean it up.






So I decided to use some of those nasty thistles for a treat.
You will need work gloves and some of those thorns will go through leather so be prepared to suffer a little.

I used a combat knife to chop the thistle and remove most of the outer thorns. I am at war with these weeds so the combat knife just felt appropriate.

You need to peel as much of the fibrous outer skin off that you can leaving the tender and soft inside core.

This is very much like celery and can be eaten raw or cooked in a stew.

All in all, this was not an enjoyable task. I found that I did not get enough of the fiber off when I cleaned it. The taste is very close to celery and when mixed with ranch salad dressing it was good. But it was a lot of squeeze for the juice.

Thistle is something that I would add to a wild stew to add fiber to the diet. In a survival situation or just when you don't have much money for groceries, this can help you stretch your pantry supplies.

I really have to say at this point that I am glad I planted asparagus though. I picked some tonight and had a plate of steamed asparagus with salt and butter.
Now THAT was cozy!

Thank you for stopping by.
Dee Dee

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