Goosefoot | WDBNK's plant of the month June 2018

Our mission at www.wdbnk.com is to keep the knowledge of the pre-industrial age alive. Your garden, the prairies around your village and the woods are abundant with food waiting for you to come and gather as much as you need.

WDBNK is highlighting a plant every month, and the wild vegetable we are presenting in June 2018 is the #goosefoot.

Magenta Spreen - a very attractive and tasty kind of goosefoot

Goosefoot or #Chenopodium is a family of plants ranging from good king henry to white goosefoot and, best known to most, to #quinoa.

The goosefoot grows almost everywhere in the world. Even though it is known as a pioneer plant that you would find on mostly found on dry places and along ways, you can sow it in April or October in well manured beds and, as soon as they are strong enough, gather the leaves every 8 days.

Goosefoot has always been used as a very tasty and tender vegetable containing loads of proteins, carotene, vitamin B and minerals. If you'd like to compare goosefoot to spinach, you'd see that it contains three times the vitamin C, point five more potassium, twice the calcium and twice the magnesium. But let's not talk badly about spinach which is a great vegetable too.

There's oxalic acid in goosefoot, as there is in spinach, so don't eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner for weeks. ;-)

The leaves and their stems are blanched and cooked like spinach. They are very tender and more refined in taste than spinach. It's pretty impressive if you eat it for the first time. You will look at the goosefoot patches you'll pass by afterwards completely differently: You'll get hungry. :-D

Until August you can even use the leaves,flowers and buds in salads. Keep the seeds to grow sprouts in winter, so you'll stay supplied in vitamin during the dark months.

If you're from India, you know the #goosefoot as the winter vegetable “#Bathua”. If you have any pictures or further information on the use in recipes, let us know!

Goosefoot can also be used in medicinal ways for it's anti-inflammatory effects and positive influence during menstruation. For the same reason it helps during menstruation, know that if you're pregnant consumption of goosefoot is strongly discouraged!

Check out the recipes for WDBNK's Plant of the Month 2018 here:

First recipe: Good King Henry's favourite risotto

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