Chickweed foraging, coffee, and a wicked sweet tooth

My two pet rabbits, Yogi and Cleo, eat a lot of greens.  Soon I'll have to buy them their veggies, but right now I can still forage for them.  During the spring and summer they eat a lot of clover, dandelions, plantain and Queen Anne's lace.  But in cool weather like this, one of the most plentiful edible greens is chickweed.  And guess what?  People can eat it, too.  The simplest way to prepare it is to eat it raw in salads, but you can also add it to soups or, lightly sauteed, to omelettes.  I also found a recipe for chickweed pesto here (This site also has a good photo to help you identify chickweed.)  I've also used chickweed in an herbal salve for Jake, who is prone to eczema.

Other than the chickweed, I don't have too much to report.  This morning Jake and I drove downtown to the coffee shop to meet our friend, the playwright Michael R. McGuire.  (We normally walk but it was raining.)  Although I've posted in the past that all other things being equal, I'd rather buy tea than coffee so the shop owner makes a little more money, today I was dragging and opted for coffee. 

When the weather cleared I walked to Fiddleheads.  I've had an awful, awful craving for sweets the past few days, the kind of craving that sweet potatoes couldn't touch.  I thought I'd buy a chocolate muffin, but instead I discovered my not-very-junky favorite new junk food: Cocoa Mole sprouted sunflower seeds by Kaia Foods.  These were delicious!  The ingredients were organic sprouted sunflower seeds, organic raw agave nectar, organic raw cacao powder, organic vanilla extract, organic cayenne pepper and sea salt.  A really piggish amount was only 2.99--a small price to pay to be able to finally think about something other than chocolate.  And now that I've tried them, I can probably replicate them at home.

I bought a little lettuce and a carrot, too.  And I managed to bring them home in something other than clear plastic bags. :)

Tomorrow Mike has a reading of one of his plays down in Westport.  A bunch of us are carpooling down to see it (yay) and we'll be getting home late.  So I probably won't be posting again until Thursday. 



Daily Consumption Totals:

Entertainment: $2 (I've been vacillating, but I've decided not to include tips.)

Food: $6.10

Miles Driven: 1.5

Foraged: chickweed  (There's been lots of foraging since I started this blog.  This is just the first time I've mentioned it.)