The other night I was preparing pasta and decided that this would be an opportunity to prepare it.

So, when the rigatoni was almost ready (about 5 min. left) I dumped the clean lamb’s quarters leaves into the boiling salted water. The pasta and leaves were then drained and tossed with warm cannellini beans, lemon zest, freshly grated parmesan and cracked black pepper.

The lamb’s quarters gave the pasta just the right amount of green leafy flavor and a little bit of a slippery “seaweedy” kind of texture.

One of my new favorite foraged foods!

The last thing we want is people pulling native plants out of the soil in alleys or painstakingly restored natural areas and eating them or even replanting them in their gardens. While we hope everyone will plant native plants at home, the plants should always be purchased from a reputable nursery or obtained in exchange through an organization like Wild Ones, for the next several decades at least.

Illinois native plants have been decimated almost to extinction. Let’s give them and the native fauna that depend on them for food a break. We have the option of shopping in the grocery store. Our native insects and birds don’t!

Shirlee Hoffman, Native Habitats, Openlands

There’s food everywhere. Earlier this summer I discovered purslane; after reading this post, I went in the yard to find lamb’s quarters growing all over (I am sure I’ve dumped pounds of this edible green into the waste can in the past few months as I cleared and “weeded” my garden).

Conversation I had a few minutes ago:

ME (holding fist full of chenopodium, to The Wife): You know what this is?

THE WIFE (bent over, picking through through trash I had thrown out earler in the morning, looking up, skeptical): Weeds?

ME: No, lunch.