Plant life.

I would love to meet the person who figured out you could eat plants. Hm. Maybe that’s a strange thing to say. How about this – I would love to meet the person who figured out that this certain plant was tasty, and that one was toxic. I should like to shake their hand for doing the heavy lifting for me. No foxglove in this household, as far as I know, although one of my kids was talking about Socrates and how he had a difficult time with hemlock. I’m no Greek philosopher, but I’ll pass, thanks.

When I go into the forest there are a few things I know I can eat – huckleberries, salmonberries, thimbleberries, saskatoon berries… Asparagus, morels… Fruit trees from long-overgrown orchards… Fiddleheads? That’s about it.

And I’m also pretty sure I can identify a pine mushroom. But in a million years I would never trust myself to eat one. My father-in-law knows his mushrooms and he did find and cut up one for me off the forest floor many years ago. It was great.

But I’m still leery. I have heard of enough horror stories about eating the wrong thing out in nature. It’s wild out there and nature doesn’t care how carefully edited your ‘eat from the wild’ book was.

And thus to the sage. This grows in our garden and I’m pretty sure even the morning glory that tries to choke it out at every turn is also edible but just not nearly as tasty, lest a spring of it end up in the soup. thankfully, the balance of plants in this area are also edible – namely the thyme on one side and the oregano on the other side… Rosemary and tarragon just down the way. I feared the sage plant was near death not too long ago. The morning glory was strangling as best it could, the cold winter obviously didn’t help, either. The leaves were nearly all gone. I did my best to not pick too many and it was quickly becoming obvious that there soon would be no more to pick. However, some regular water, warm weather, and a bit of fresh soil and we have an abundance of one of my favourite herbs.

Perfect with some wide-noodled pasta. Farfalle or the like. Butter and olive oil in a pan; cook the sage leaves until they sizzle and get crispy, hoist in a quarter-cup of roasted pine nuts, salt and pepper, toss and serve with a bit of the pasta water.

Yummy. It’s a bit of a starch overload so we don’t do it that often, but man, it’s good.