Verdolagas

I remember going out into the yard with my mother and picking a certain weed she called verdolagas.  It was a succulent, small leaf weed that my mother would prepare for us to eat.  Yesterday, in my very own yard, I found a weed patch with some verdolagas growing. My heart warmed as I remembered the good tasting weed but since I have sprayed the area numerous times to be rid of the weeds, I will not be picking the verdolagas out of my yard. Yet, it brought back a lot of memories.

It was fun being out under the hot sun and running ahead of my mother. I would pull a weed out of the ground and with my four year old voice would ask, "Is this one?"  "No, mi hijita, it looks like this." She would hold the bunch in her hand out for me to see and off I would run to try and find the wild weed!

Chopped onion sauteed in a small amount of grease, garlic, a few cooked pinto beans and the greens made for a tasty dish. Sometimes, cheese would be sprinkled on top of the prepared dish. Wild spinach, another edible weed, was something else we would find in the yard. I recall going for Sunday drives through the country side and my mother telling my father to stop the car so she could go pick the wild plants.

I looked up the word "verdolaga" on the Internet and it came up with lots of pictures of the plant. Recipes accompanied the pictures and I found out another name for the plant is "purslane."

"Despite the gardener's best intentions,

nature will improvise."

Michael P. Garafalo