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Pokeweed images2/27/2024 ![]() This article appears in the August/September 2020 issue of Garden & Gun. Grandma Mary made hers the traditional way, as we would prepare tender turnip or mustard greens-a little salted pork for flavoring, with some cornbread on the side to round out the meal. I like to fold my boiled leaves into a quiche, and my father used to sauté his harvest with onions and eggs. The way Grandma told it, their mother ate the berries from the pokeweed plant when she was pregnant with them, and they never stood a chance of being normal.Įverybody in my family puts their own spin on poke sallet. I have two cousins, Chris and Larry, who can never get along, and their childhood shenanigans at family gatherings were always slightly over the top, like putting peaches in a rival’s tailpipe. There are songs about the plant, like “Polk Salad Annie,” and stories, folktales really, about what happens to people who disobey the elders’ warnings. When it comes to cooking pokeweed, the main thing to remember is to boil the leaves twice to get rid of the toxins. It’s known to be toxic when not prepared correctly, and there are many rules she taught me about harvesting the plant-don’t pick it near roadways because of the exhaust and pesticides, don’t eat the plum-colored berries, and don’t mess with the root, the most poisonous part. I learned most of what I know about pokeweed from my paternal grandmother, Grandma Mary. Come early March, I start watching areas of disturbed earth and unkempt old homesites-places it likes to grow. ![]() It’s tough to cultivate, so hunting for the wild plant is an annual routine much like spring cleaning. Often compared to spinach and less desired by mainstream cooks than ramps and lamb’s-quarter, pokeweed remains a sought-after delicacy for my family. But it’s on par with morels for the complexity and versatility it can attain in the hands of a capable cook. Pokeweed, or poke sallet, as it’s known once it’s cooked, is survival food. After families ate through their stockpiles of preserved food during a hard winter, pokeweed was one of the first edible greens to appear every year. ![]() Indigenous people have used the pokeweed plant for herbal medicine for centuries, but its traditional Southern culinary preparation was probably born out of desperation. Right after the daffodils start to bloom but before the monarch butterflies come back, before the strawberries catch their color and asparagus gets that violet tinge, when the bluebirds start singing and the cardinals come around again, I know it’s time to start scanning the edges of the woods for the scarlet-stalked plant my family considers to be “good eating.” We aren’t the only ones fond of this towering weed found throughout the South. Gholston runs the festival each year to preserve the history and knowledge of foraging pokeweed.I always look for pokeweed first. But he also says that a lot of Black folks don't eat it anymore, because it has "connotations of poorness and rural." Since pokeweed is one of the first edible wild vegetables to pop up in the spring, it was foraged and eaten as the winter's stocks of preserved food were wearing thin. Some older folks "back in the day" would make wine from the poke berries, and fry up the stalks like okra. Gholston, a 70-year-old retiree, told the New York Times that his mom would wash it and cook it and that some relatives would serve it for Sunday dinner. Pokeweed used to be a staple in Appalachian communities, particularly for survival in Black communities. The festival features live music, food vendors, and - of course - poke salad tastings. In Appalachia, poke salad is often called poke sallet or sallit, and there's a whole festival thrown for it started by Larry Gholston in Georgia every Memorial Day weekend for the past 33 years.
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