Here’s My Favorite Thing to Do With All Those Greens

If you spend any time in the country, you will see people of all kinds, gathering greens on hillsides. It doesn’t happen here in the U.S. as much as it does in Italy or Greece or Lebanon or Mexico or dozens of places I’ve never been, but it happens everywhere—including here, where there are people with the heritage or inclination—because a “weed” is just a plant that’s growing in the wild, sometimes in the “wrong” place, and many weeds are in fact edible plants. Even I can recognize lamb’s quarters and purslane and dandelion, and I routinely gather them and cook them, because why not? 

Gathering weeds goes back to before agriculture: that is to say, it’s not even a tradition but something humans do, like berry-picking or mussel gathering, which makes it all the more fun.