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In her later years, my Aunt Hazel could be observed on summer evenings pacing back and forth across her suburban front lawn eyeing the ground. Amid the standard lawn grass in her unruly yard were a host of edible infiltrators: lamb’s quarter, dandelion leaves, and what she called redroot greens. She picked them as she found them and took them inside to wash and steam. To any of her neighbors who would listen, she preached the health-promoting properties of these plants that most people dismissed as weeds.
My grandmother was graced with granny wisdom and mountain magic. Born into a tribe of backwoods folk, she was one of a family of talisman-bearers and spell-chanters that spread throughout the wooded hills on the eastern edge of Appalachia, nestling themselves among the lush oaks and whispering pines of Western Maryland.
Grandma was a storyteller. She told me that once long ago an albino crow flew over Sidling Hill and dropped a seed from its mouth into the early morning mist that gathers where the Old Swain Road cuts into Little Orleans. And there where she sat resting her bones against a bowed maple trunk, the seed landed in her lap. Taking it as a sign that tender mercies arrive even in a world full of trouble, she swallowed it. And that, she said, was what gave her the power one winter to feed her nine children on a few shriveled turnips and a sack of flour. That is what gave her the power to recognize among the weeds and brambles that grow here and there, in the woods and meadows and along the side of the road, which ones were good for eating.
The second oldest of my grandmother’s children, Aunt Hazel learned about redroot greens when she was a child and her mother sent her outside into the garden and across the green spaces surrounding their house to find and pick them for the family’s dinner. She, or anyone who picked greens for Grandma, was instructed to pull up the roots along with the leaves so Grandma could inspect them. The red roots proved that the picker had found the real greens and not some potentially poisonous imposter.
When I was a child, I ate redroot greens in Grandma’s kitchen, where their miraculous appearance in her garden was celebrated. “They come up volunteer!” Grandma exclaimed. That was her way of saying that they grow spontaneously wherever the earth is turned to prepare it for planting other vegetables. A good stir of the dirt awakes them.
No miracles happened in my mother’s kitchen, but a variety of greens—spinach, kale, collards, mustard greens, chard—were regularly steamed and served. I grew up eating the greens that my mother had grown up eating, that my grandmother had grown up planting and eating.
The prominence of greens in my family’s diet may be a reflection of what Ligaya Mishan observes in her New York Times article “What We Write about When We Write about Food.” Mishan suggests that “when we write about food, we are writing about class struggle.” The rich and the poor can be distinguished by the kinds of foods they consume. The poor, including my eastern Appalachian ancestors, look to the ground for the sustenance it can provide, free for the taker. And greens are what the poor find. To them, greens are manna.
Recently I happened upon an advertisement for a book titled How Not to Die. I might not have paid much attention to it, except that I had just been released from the hospital after undergoing emergency surgery for a condition from which I was unaware that I had been suffering. I was afraid. The book’s title spoke directly to me, so I bought it.
In it, Dr. Michael Greger promotes a plant-based diet that is purported to “prevent and reverse disease.” The book identifies a list of foods that are essential to health. Dr. Greger calls these the Daily Dozen, and he offers an app that allows one to keep track of one’s daily consumption of these foods. As you eat, you check them off the list in the app.
The Daily Dozen includes many of the foods that a vegetarian might expect. Beans, berries and other fruits, whole grains, flaxseeds, cruciferous and other vegetables, herbs and spices, plenty of water, and greens.
The plan recommends two servings of greens per day. Dr. Greger claims, “Dark-green, leafy vegetables are the healthiest foods on the planet.” And he promises, “Eating greens nearly every day may be one of the most powerful steps you can take to prolong your life.” As I read How Not to Die and encountered these accolades for greens, I grabbed hold of Dr. Greger’s words as one might grab hold of a life-giving charm. They spoke to my history, my heritage. I felt as if he had written this advice just for me.
Holly Chris, host of YouTube’s The Haphazard Homestead, reveals that the more common name for what my grandmother called redroot greens is “redroot pigweed,” and its horticultural moniker is amaranthus retroflexus. (If Grandma knew that the plant was called pigweed, perhaps she renamed it to make it sound more appetizing to a brood of nine children.)
In her video titled “Garden Weeds You Can Eat,” Chris tells us to think of redroot pigweed as “a spinach that planted itself.” After the plant is identified by its red root and harvested, she says, it can be cooked with ham hocks, added to soups, frozen for use during the winter, or the stalks can be preserved by pickling. The plant is rich in iron, protein, calcium, and phosphorus.
“It’s a completely free harvest!” she says.
In his book Greene on Greens and Grains, eminent food writer Bert Greene recalls that his Russian immigrant grandmother asked grocers to give her the discarded green tops of vegetables. She used them to make a stew that helped to stretch the little bit of meat she could afford to feed her family.
Years later, Greene says, he himself buys varieties of greens from “fancy greengrocers,” and uses them not to stretch his meat, but to savor the rich flavor they add to soups and stews.
Grandma believed that edible weeds appeared in her garden by magic. They were evidence of the mercy that is rained down upon a troubled life. Redroot greens were a charmed plant, picked and brought into the kitchen with hushed reverence. They were cleaned and cooked quickly in water with a little butter and salt. As they cooked, anticipation rose, nudged by Grandma’s enthusiasm.
Something good would come of eating them, she promised. Along with the greens, she gave me the cooking liquid, which she called magic broth, to drink. Health and strength and goodness, she said, were in those greens.
For Grandma, the edible weeds that grew in her garden were a form of grace bestowed on those willing to bend down and receive them. They were life-sustaining providence for those in need.
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Previously Published on georgiakreiger.com and is republished on Medium.
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