Polk Salad -- or is that Poke Salad?

Photo: Pokeweed Festival

Pokeweed is often harvested in the wild. It is used as a green, but far from being a superfood, it's actually poisonous. The way polk salad eaters get around that inconvenient fact is to boil it, and boil it again.

The first time polk salad appeared on my radar was when I heard the immortal song by Tony Joe White, Polk Salad Annie. But what a shame the 'gator got her granny.

Pokeweed is native to the southeastern US, and it's young leaves have a flavour resembling spinach or asparagus. Every spring for the past 38 years, the Poke Salad Festival has been held in Blanchard, Louisiana. Events include a parade, a carnival, a pet parade, a treasure hunt, and a beauty pageant.

As a bonus, the pokeberry yields a gorgeous purple dye.

Arugula aka Rocket

Photo: Gourmet Sleuth

This peppery green is known and loved in the UK and Australia as rocket.

In Italian cuisine, it's called rucola. According to the Gourmet Sleuth, this tangy green is also known as roquette, rucola, and rugula. It's easy to grow, and can be used in place of basil to make pesto.

Like most greens, it's nutritious and delicious. Rocket belongs to the brassica family, along with turnips, cauliflower, and broccoli. This plant group is considered useful in combating cancer.

Arugula-rucola-rocket is native to the Mediterranean region, and grows wild from Portugal and Morocco to Turkey.

Watercress

Photo: The Watercress Experiment

Foods go in and out of fashion, and some are revered for what their proponents consider near-magic properties.

According to Dr. Nicholas Perricone, eating watercress can relieve acne and  wrinkles, and even prevent cancer. Others claim eating watercress is an effective way of losing weight.

The British have long been fond of this green, which grows in their country along streams and in wet places. It can be eaten in salad and also made into soup.

As long ago as 2007, scientists at the University of Ulster published a study in the American Journal of Nutrition that conferred the status of a superfood on this peppery little green.

My first encounter with watercress was the tangy surprise of the green garnish on a Scotch egg. This was a long time ago, in the cafe of the Tate Gallery in London. Watercress was then almost unheard-of in western Canada. Actually, it still isn't terribly common here.

Okra

Photo: Okra, by Southern Food

Okra, a tropical plant with the Latin name hibiscus esculentis is a relative of cotton as well as of the hibiscus flower, itself used in a herb tea rich in antioxidants. In the southern US, okra is a well-known vegetable. It's natural gooiness is what gives Cajun gumbo its texture.

Sometimes the vegetable itself is called gumbo, from the Bantu word ngombo. Native to northwestern Africa, okra was brought to North America by slaves. A West African Ashanti name for this vegetable is nkruma.

Interestingly, Kwame Nkrumah was the name of the African leader who led the new nation of Ghana to independence. However, as a name, Nkrumah is considered unrelated to the plant name.

Eggplants -- or are they aubergines?

Picture: Fruits R Us

Like tomatoes and peppers, eggplants belong to a plant family called the deadly nightshade.

Along with potatoes and spinach, this plant family includes belladonna, known since ancient times as a poison. Even though it was toxic, it was used by women as a beauty enhancer, and thus acquired it's name, which means beautiful lady.

Eggplants are perfectly edible. They grow on prickly vines. Chinese eggplants are longer, thinner, and less tough. Kitazawa Seed Co. carries a whole variety of Japanese eggplants.

Eggplants are in season for the next couple of months. The name, used only in North America, is presumably derived from the shape. But if eggplants were eggs, they'd be mighty large ones. Emu eggs, maybe, or ostrich eggs.

In the UK, this vegetable is called by its French name, aubergine. The history of this name is circuitous, according to Bill Casselman. Its roots originated in Sanskrit and entered the Spanish language with the arrival of the Moors, coming in by way of Persian and then Arabic, as a corruption of al berginia. The French picked it up as aubergine and the English took it from there.

Though I have often wondered whether the word aubergine is related to auberge, the French word for inn, I've found no evidence that this is the case.

Aubergine is also the name of the rich purple colour of this vegetable.

Love those wolf peaches

 Photo: OKFruit

This week we've been eating sun-ripened Okanagan beefsteak tomatoes. In late summer they are plentiful and cheap, bought with mud still clinging to them from the fields.

Field-ripened peppers are available at this season too, and go well in the fresh tomato soup I love to make at this time of year.

Of course, the best use of these seasonal tomatoes is fresh and raw in salads. Some are cracked or funny-shaped, but for flavour and texture, no hothouse tomato, no matter how smooth and regular, can touch these sun-ripened delights.

Tomatoes have and interesting history. The Latin name, Lycopersicon esculentum, translatable as wolf-peach, was given because this fruit (or call it a vegetable, if you must) was once considered poisonous.

According to Peggy Trowbridge Filippone, the English word tomato is derived from the Spanish tomate, which comes in turn from tomatl, in the Nahuatl or Aztec language.

It is said that Cortez brought tomato seeds back to Europe from the Americas in the early 1500s. However, at first tomatoes were used for ornamental purposes only. The plant belongs to the deadly nightshade family, and the fruit was considered unsafe to eat.

On the other hand, the French have been known to refer to tomatoes as pommes d'amour, due to their supposed aphrodisiac quality.

Simon Fraser

Photo: The Canadian Encyclopedia

Simon Fraser was an early explorer of Canada -- except, of course, the Canada we know today did not yet exist. He was born at Mapletown in New York in 1776 and died in Ontario in 1862.

But what was this man really like? Would he be surprised to learn he had a large and important university named after him? Or that the world-famous SFU Pipe Band, dressed in the university's own tartan, was led by one of the world's major band leaders?

Simon was the youngest of ten children, but in his time, this was not an outlandish number. Were his parents too exhausted to bother with their youngest? Did his older siblings play with him, cosset him, entertain him?

We don't know. Across the abyss of time, it is hard to determine with any certainty what personal and social forces formed and motivated him.

We do know he was descended from the noble Lovat clan of Scottish Highlanders. History drove his ancestors out of Scotland. In 1745, Scottish Highland chieftains rebelled against the British Crown and tried to claim the throne for Bonnie Prince Charlie. The attempt failed. In April 1746, the Battle of Culloden sounded the death knell not only of many rebel and British government troops, but of the Highland way of life. Lands, rights and goods were seized, clans were forbidden to wear tartan and the kilt was banned.

In the years that followed, there was a huge exodus of Highlanders from Scotland. Many came to North America, and Simon Fraser's family were among these emigrants. When they settled in New York in 1773, their troubles were far from over. Ironically, Simon's father joined the United Empire Loyalist forces during the Revolutionary War. He was captured and died in jail. His wife, Simon's mother, fled with her children to Canada and settled near Cornwall, Ontario.

Between the ages of 14 and 16, young Simon was educated in Montreal by his uncle, a judge, and then apprenticed to the Northwest Company and sent west to learn the fur trade. He soon became a partner and was chosen to expand the company's operations to the far (west) side of the Rockies.

In 1808, he explored the Fraser River. He left Fort George (now Prince George) in May with a handful of voyageurs, two clerks and a couple of native guides, and followed the Fraser to the sea, portaging their canoes even along the perilous cliffs of the mighty Fraser Canyon with the help of the native guides.

He did not name the river after himself; this was done later by geographer David Thompson, for whom Simon Fraser had already named the river that today still bears his name.

After Simon Fraser retired from the fur trade, he returned to Ontario, where he eventually took part in the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837, which was a step along the road toward responsible government for the soon-to-be-born nation of Canada.