December 7, 2008

Growing weed


Ha! Not what you think! It is a dandelion planter on Isla Mujeres. All my friends know I am a little nuts for greens, often not available here.
In Ohio, I landed at the Castellucci household, where mom Nancy is about as nuts for dandelion greens as my mom was. She was cooking them up with turnip greens, eating them by the bowl full. The lot next to the house is like a dandelion farm, with the greenest, tallest leaves I have ever seen.
One evening, watching the fireflies, she lamented that although she takes seeds every winter to Florida, she has never been able to get them to grow.
Got me to thinking. I picked two heads of seeds and tucked them into a button baggie. Put them in the fridge when I got to Mexico. From years of forcing bulbs as a hobbie, I reckoned they might need a winter to come up.
Well, look at them! They look like Bibb lettuce! I'll be mixing some into my salads this weeks since there was some succulent romaine at Soriana's. And later, I'll make Italian wedding soup. Maybe even cook them with lean, free range bacon, sort of what Nancy does.
I don't want them to go to seed here and have introduced a pest. So I am on top of them. And I have another flower of seeds to plant when these are gone.
After a supper of fried plantains, and a breakfast of beet and carrot juice, I am feeling better than Popeye!

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