The Plymouth tribune. (Plymouth, Ind.) 1901-1911, 1908-11-12
WEEDS THAT ARE WHOLESOME


Extensively as Food.
Since the pure-food law has gone into
operation one has new and strange
thoughts forced upon him by recalling
the number of weeds, fungi and vegeta
BILE parasites regarded as wholesome to
day, but thought to be dangerous as
well as repellent to our ancestors, says
the Brooklyn Eagle.
Our grandparents regarded tomatoes
as the fruit of weeds, utterly unfit to
eat. The bushes grew wild in the mid
die West, where passed my boyhood,
and were to be encountered in the cor
ners of worm" fences. The tomato
was yellow or red-skinned pod of
shape 1t was perfectly round. The
fruit of this neglected weed has been
developed by cultivation into the large
and succuIent vegetable of to-day. 1t
has become one of the most valued &C
cessories TO culinary art-invaluable in
the preparation of courses and dress
ings for meats of many kinds. And yet
physicians insist that ii contains the
cancer germ.
When farmers cut their full-grown
cabbages from the stalks which lifted
them nearly a foot above the ground
preparatory to burying the cabbages in
the ground or slowing them in the cell
lars OF their "smokehOuses,' they no
ticed that young bulbs sprouted around
the tops of the decapitated stalks. No
body thought Of eating them In our
American grandparents days. Hogs
and sheep were observed to be very
fond of them. Goats also ate them with
avidity, but, then, goats thrOve upon
newspapers and were currently believed
are the Brussels sprouts of our pres
ent dietary system Opinion is greatly
divided as to the origin of the cabbage
and for that reason the vegetable hasn't
taken high rank among the family
of edible plants. Germans rot it in
n barrel, pickle it and name 1t 'sauer-
kraut."
That IL is a development by evolution
| from the skunk cabbage, of the ponds
is doubtful, because its leaves are quite
| dissimilar In form. But it is a food
| of very low origin. The same may be
said of turnips, beets and potatoes
among the latter must be included the
yam or sweet potato
When the French colonized the
country that Is now Louisiana they
! found weed growing amid the bayous
and overlooked lands along the Missis-
sippi to which the aborigines gave the
name of "okra'-a word meaning a
muddy place and probably referring to
the localities i'm which the herb grew
| 1t bore mucilaginous pod, which,
when cut, exuded a milk-white Juice.
When the creoles got their cooking out
fits in working order they tried the
| weed as thickener for their porridges
woman who ate the first dish Of okra
soup must have been worthy of q Car
negie medal. However, the weed be-
came one of the staples of New Or
| leans epicureanism. The creoles called
| it "gumbo," a reference to its glutin-
Gus character Fyom that day Its place
in culinary art never has been In dan
| GER. "Gumbo" Is hardly known In
Paris. French cook will have naught
OF it but 1t is king of all American
soups, being to this country what NUT
ton broth, with barley, is to Scotland +;
| what bouilli-baisse is to France and
| puchara to Spain.
But the milkweed of the Louisiana
swamps remains one of the food discov-
cries Of the world. The Roman gour-
mands whose paiates were so highly
trained that they could tell the differ
ence in taste between lamprey fed upon
human flesh and those fattened upon
goats would have appreciated okra. or,
more properly, 'gumbO" stew. With
chicken 1t Is a delight to the palate.