Native Oak Flat Pokeweed, amongst other weedy vegetation
On the 20th (last Saturday), Kim and I went to the 48th Annual Poke Salad Festival in Blanchard, Louisiana. We enjoyed the drive through the country, seeing new places, and strolling by the antique cars & festival booths. However, the festival was not particularly “poke-salady.” It seemed to only be that in name, without any particular emphasis on poke salad. I guess I expected more would be done to relate the festival to the traditional Southern food. Or maybe we missed the poke salad booth?
Near one booth I saw 3 or 4 poke salad plants in some pots. Not sure why. Perhaps for sale? Probably not. Maybe for the ambiance? I noticed that the stems on these were brownish, not green or purple as I ones that I have always seen. I wonder if there more than one variety of poke salad?
Poke Salad (aka poke, pokeweed, poke sallet) is a traditional Southern dish which I am familiar with through my lifetime – though I have not eaten inordinate amounts of it. In addition to use as a food, various pages on the internet mention other uses which I have never seen. “Industrial” uses include making ink and dye from the juice of the berries. It has also been used in folk medicine. It has been recommended for the treatment of rheumatism and arthritis, as well as an emetic and purgative. The homeopathic company Boiron sells a pokeweed medicine for sore throat relief.
I have only eaten poke salad as cooked greens – usually “in-halfs” with other cooked greens such kale, mustard greens, or turnip greens (and parboiled first). How some other people say they eat it are: young stalks cooked like asparagus or okra; the leaves pan-fried in bacon grease, with onions, salt, and pepper; the berries for syrups, jams, and pie fillings. I know nothing of these uses and cannot recommend them for that reason. All parts of the pokeweed – root, stalk, leaves, and berries – contain toxins and should only be used by those who know how to prepare them.
Most East Texas folks (at least rural ones, I suppose) will find poke salad abundant, easy to identify – and free! Free food is hard to beat, and I have read that poke salad is extremely high in vitamin A. On the one hand, there is the story of a family in our community during the Depression. They leveraged poke salad as a survival ration. It is remembered that the husband/father picked it no matter how mature the plant. None of them died or got sick (that is, then, from eating poke salad). On the other hand, there is the story of the Baptist preacher who baptized me. Once he accidentally ate some raw poke salad, thinking it was spinach. He did not die, but ended up in the emergency room with severe stomach cramps.
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