By Anita Odessa
If it Doesn’t Hurt, it’s Not Nettle.
Several years ago, I simplified my life and created a space for something new. I assumed that something new would be a relationship. What it turned out to be was an untameable passion for foraging edible wild plants.
It was late fall when the urge hit, triggered by utopian childhood memories of binging on black caps and delicately suckling around the prickles of wild gooseberries. Plants were already dying back for winter so the only way to approach my muse was with strategic preparation. I stocked up on copies of the undisputed gospels of edible wild plants, Samuel Thayer’s The Forager’s Harvest and subsequent books, and poured over them obsessively all winter. The pictures of shoots, leaves and fruits were like candy to me. On cold days, I salivated over Sam’s identification and harvesting tips and formed mental maps of where I was determined to find each succulent specimen in growing season.
Spring came and although I was eager to apply my foraging studies all at once, a part of me knew that prudence should prevail. Nettles, with their infamous sting, seemed like a straightforward start for a beginner so I narrowed my early searches accordingly. That still left me with two kinds of nettles to locate: the stinging nettle that earns the plant its reputation, but also a wilder, equally nettlesome cousin, the wood nettle.
But what transpired could only be called wishful foraging. I had never actually seen a nettle before. My mental maps laid over the winter of where and when I thought a nettle should be proved useless. When I arrived where X marked the spot, every green thing basically looked the same. Was that a nettle? Were those spikes along its stem or only hairs? Why weren’t my fingers stinging? Maybe I was just a resilient person. My inner dialogue was pandemonium. In the result and contrary to every rule of foraging, I ended up picking, preparing and emphatically spitting out various wild greens that summer that were not nettles, from false nettle to raspberry leaves and who-knows-what in between.
It took my kids to finally lift me from my confusion. When they brought me a gift from their father one day – a bouquet of dead stinging nettles he had eradicated from his yard– I didn’t take that as a slight. I seized it (literally) as the perfect gift for me.
“EEeeeoooouuuccchhh!” I exclaimed with immediate pain and comprehension as I accepted the spiky arrangement. Finally, I understood what the dreaded nettle sting was about and where my wild plant identification had been going wrong. To put it simply: if it doesn’t hurt, it’s not nettle.
It was still not until the following summer that I encountered nettles in the wild. I was scrambling over a fallen tree on a hike when I lost my footing, falling flat on my back on the ground. As I lay there, a sudden electric sting pierced my bare arms and legs like something between lightning and acupuncture. I could only grin like a fool. Wood nettles! I had lucked out and fallen into a whole patch of them!
That cinched my love of foraging for good. These days I enjoy both stinging and wood nettles – harvested wearing gloves when I expect to stumble upon them – from their early shoots in May to new top growth and seeds in September. I don’t kill the plant. I only prune it lightly, leaving more for later and to share with other critters. A quick two or three minute steam removes the sting without compromising the texture, which is a bit woolly but I prefer to the limpness of store-bought greens. Forager Chef Alan Bergo and other shave lots of recipes for how to prepare them, but I like them best simply sautéed with butter, garlic and chili pepper flakes after that initial steaming.
I have grown addicted to the lifestyle of hiking for my food and now approach every walk with the attentiveness of a huntress (much to the chagrin of my teenage children, who find me slow). I have retrained my eyes to notice abundance where I had forgotten how to see it. I have remembered the other creatures sharing my food and only take as much as I need.
When once you would have seen me frequenting restaurants and takeout counters, nowadays, you’ll mostly find me wildin’.