The Easter Bunny Goes Foraging

Two of our naturally dyed Easter eggs nestled in some wood sorrel at the edge of our foundation.

This Easter, the kids weren't the only ones who found treasures during the egg hunt. I have it on good authority that the Easter Bunny found some wood sorrel and mouse-ear chickweed growing in the crack between our foundation and the paved patio in our backyard and that he specifically placed some eggs there so that we would find and sample the plants.

Wood sorrel leaf.

Wood sorrel was the first edible wild plant I positively identified in our yard. Since I learned to recognize it last summer, the boys and I have been spotting it everywhere. It looks a lot like clover (many people confuse the two plants), but the leaves of wood sorrel are heart shaped rather than oval, and they lack they characteristic white semi-circle that runs horizontally across a clover leaf. Both plants grow in lawns and at the edges of woods and have three leaves at the end of each stalk. Wood sorrel makes tiny yellow flowers in summer. The leaves have a pleasant lemony zing and make a wonderful outdoor nibble. They would also make an excellent addition to salad, and I imagine they would flavor certain soups nicely.

Mouse-ear chickweed growing at the edge of our foundation.

We were thus already quite familiar with wood sorrel, although we didn't know it was growing along our foundation. The mouse-ear chickweed was much more exciting given that we'd never tried any before. You might recall that I recently identified common chickweed on a national wildlife reserve but didn't sample any (see March 20 post). Mouse-ear chickweed looks exactly the same as common chickweed except that the stalk, petioles, and leaves are covered with tiny hairs (so that the leaves are reminiscent of mouse ears), whereas the stalk and petioles of common chickweed have just a single line of hairs along one side. I understand that the flavor of the two varieties is the same. Now that I've tasted the mouse-ear variety, I can report that the taste is pretty unobjectionable. Chickweed is a mildly peppery green that would make an excellent addition to any salad mix or sandwich. The mouse-ear variety does remind me of eating peach skins because of the fuzzy texture, though. My mother thought it would probably be good in a pasta dish. I collected enough for a few tablespoons of chopped leaves and upper stalks, and the plants made a nice addition to our Easter-egg salad. Once the chickweed was chopped up and mixed in the salad, the fuzziness wasn't a factor.

Mouse-ear chickweed. The leaves and stalks
are covered with tiny hairs.
A poisonous plant that resembles
chickweed is scarlet pimpernel, which lacks
any hairs and has spots on the undersides
of the leaves.

Incidentally, this year we made a lot of egg salad and deviled eggs. We dyed four dozen eggs as part of a kids' science class I hosted at my house. I had read that one can use natural dyes, including beets, grape juice, red-onion skins, cranberry juice, yellow apple peels, lemon peels, orange peels, and various spices and seeds, to dye Easter eggs without those little chemical tablets. I thought it would be fun to have the kids guess what color each item would turn the eggs and then test our hypotheses. To dye the eggs, we were supposed to place our color agent in water, add a little vinegar, and bring the dye to a boil with the eggs in the solution. We were then to simmer the eggs for 15 minutes. The colors of the dyes were deep and vibrant, and a mixture of ground tumeric, lemon peel, and yellow apple peels had successfully colored a test egg the night before the science class. However, despite extra-lengthy boiling, I could not get the color to stick to any of the eggs before our guests had to go home. I'm really not sure why the experiment didn't work, but my guess at this point is that we needed a lot more dye ingredients to get the color to take. It just so happens that ground tumeric produces a really vibrant yellow, so it seems I was simply lucky in my choice of test dye (or unlucky, if you consider that the test gave me false confidence in my ability to dye eggs other colors). After everyone left, we tried the grape juice and found that it made our eggs look like giant robin's eggs. You can see the results of the tumeric (yellow) and grape juice (blue) dyes in the picture at the top of this post. Our other eggs eventually turned various shades of brown, yellow, and gray. It's fair to say that the foraging was more successful than the egg dying, although I plan to experiment further next year.

Soon we should be able to gather a nice mix of salad greens from our own yard. We have chickweed, wood sorrel, sheep sorrel, and some wild spinach (also known as both goosefoot and lamb's quarters) that I planted from seeds I gathered at a nearby train stop over the winter. I also planted some curly dock from seeds I gathered last fall. The wild spinach and sheep sorrel are too tiny to harvest yet, and the curly dock is just sprouting, but a tasty salad shouldn't be far off. Thanks, Easter Bunny!