NETTLE SOUP

I have been feeling like I need to start eating better, but that doesn't come very naturally to me. I am no good at giving up junk. So, my current approach is additive rather than subtractive. I've been having smoothies for breakfast, and a lot of salads. (It's possible that they're mostly iceberg lettuce. I do what I can).

When we moved up here where it's green, we had visions of bountiful gardens. The year that Violet was born, I would sneak outside to hoe the front yard while she was asleep. I was pretty proud of myself, nursing a baby, wrangling a three-year-old, and digging up a garden plot. The seeds took off like crazy. But then, in the night, the deer came.

The next year, James spent every free sunny day down the hill, clearing dead brush and trees and digging post holes for a fence. As weeks passed, we kept counting the veggies we could still hope to plant and harvest by the end of the season. In July, we gave up.

 This year it's March and we haven't so much as flipped through a seed catalogue. We've got plants, though. These guys grow just outside the kitchen door, where they can sting us on the way to the compost pile. I guess it's time to eat them.

This afternoon I put on dish gloves and picked a bunch of leaves. I rinsed them in a colander, simmered some water, and cooked them for two minutes (just long enough to wilt the leaves and take away their sting). I was feeling lazy, so I stirred in some miso and hot sauce and left it at that.

They were OK, actually, very mild in flavor, which is a good thing for me and greens. They weren't at all stingy, but a little fuzzy, which I wasn't that crazy about. Next time I want to pulverize the hell out of them in a smoothie, then maybe try these noodles, which look amazing.

Because, there will be a next time. We have enough nettles to last all year.