Low Country Boil

My friends Chris and Rick, who live in Bend, Oregon, were visiting Savannah, Georgia where their youngest daughter is starting school.  I particularly love their addition to this Low Country Boil recipe -  "Two avg size Oregonians" - complete with the abbreviated amount "avg" for "average".  

"Low Country"  refers to the region along South Carolina's coast, although the exact geography is subject to debate.  "Lowcountry Cuisine" is defined by Wiki as: "... the cooking traditionally associated with the South Carolina Lowcountry and Georgia coast. While it shares features with Southern cooking, its geography, economics, demographics, and culture pushed its culinary identity in a different direction from regions above the fall line. With its rich diversity of seafood from the coastal estuaries, its concentration of wealth in Charleston and Savannah, and a vibrant Caribbean cuisine and African cuisine influence, Lowcountry cooking has strong parallels with New Orleans and Cajun cuisines."   I wondered about the Cajun reference in the recipe above, and now I know!

As to the addition of two average sized Oregonians to the recipe:  I like them too much to participate in boiling them and spreading them out on newspapers to enjoy, but I do appreciate the postcard!

Chomp

Humans aren't the only carnivores.  There are at least 630 species of carniverous plants that "attract and trap prey, produce digestive enzymes, and absorb the resulting available nutrients".  Also from the Wiki:

Five basic trapping mechanisms are found in carnivorous plants.

1.Pitfall traps (pitcher plants) trap prey in a rolled leaf that contains a pool of digestive enzymes or bacteria.

2.Flypaper traps use a sticky mucilage.

3.Snap traps utilize rapid leaf movements.

4.Bladder traps suck in prey with a bladder that generates an internal vacuum.

5.Lobster-pot traps force prey to move towards a digestive organ with inward-pointing hairs.

 

My friend Lorry painted this drawing which was used to promote a carniverous plant exhibit at the Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.  Looks like it is an example of #1, above - the pitfall trap.

Dandelion Salad

Food foraging is the latest in the Bay Area foodie scene.  I've got mixed feelings about this new trend, as it has the potential to be yet another excuse for "entrepreneurs" to decimate our natural resources.  (Other examples include abalone and sea urchin poachers.)  However, if any plant is going to be foraged, let it be the dandelion.  The plant appeared about 30 million years ago, and has been used as a food and an herb for much of recorded history.

Thanks to the Mystery Sender for this dandelion salad recipe and information.   As the message says:

The name of the dandelion comes from the French name for the plant "dents de lion" or teeth of the lion, referring to the jagged edges of the leaf.  The other French name for the plant is "pis-en-lit" which means "wet the bed" because the greens, when eaten, remove water from the body.  Not recommended for a night time snack!

The Wiki provides additional  insight as to the origin of the name:

In modern French the plant is named pissenlit, (or pisse au lit in the vernacular).   Likewise, "piss-a-bed" is an English folk-name for this plant, as is piscialletto in Italian and the Spanish meacamas.  These names refer to the strong diuretic effect of the roots of the plant.  In various north-eastern Italian dialects the plant is known as pisacan ("dog pisses"), referring to how common they are found at the side of pavements.

The recipe for Dandelion Salad includes the caution that the greens be harvested only "from an area that has never been sprayed or fertilized".  I think they should add a caution about dogs, as well.