Amaranth, Deer Meat, and De-Befuddling My Mind

Each year I like to experiment with a new crop -- this past gardening season I was very excited to work with Amaranth, which is a plant that was widely cultivated by the ancient Native Americans living in the southwest, Mexico, and parts of Central and South America. It's an amazingly nutritious grain that contains not only vitamins and minerals, but protein, too. So, I was browsing through an organic seed catalog last year, when I "discovered" that Amaranth could be grown in New Jersey! Can you imagine? Well, it turns out that it's not so hard to imagine because Amaranth is also known as Pigweed and growns wild throughout much of the northeast. The grain can be used whole in cereals and salads or ground into flour for use in baking. In addition, the leaves can be picked and used as salad greens or as a cooked vegetable that tastes like spinach, but contains three times as much calcium and niacin plus carotene, iron, vitamin A and C.

I quickly ordered seeds and waited for my crop to grow. I think of the backyard gardening as the antidote to "corporate" farming, which replaces the natural nutrients, tastefulness, and healthy aspects of our food with chemicals, additives, growth hormones, pesticides, and other poisons. So you can imagine my confusion when I hesitated to eat the leaves of the Amaranth plants I had grown from organic seed in my chemical-free garden! What's going on here? Well, I'll tell you...

While standing at the counter, looking at the plate of steaming red leaves, I pondered my reaction. I thought about the time someone put a plate of venison in front of me. It had a lovely brown gravy and smelled delicious. However, it was difficult to get that first forkful of food into my mouth. My stomach was queasy, chewing was agonizing, and swallowing almost impossible. Although not as dramatic, after all a plant is not Bambi, the reason for my discomfort was clear -- my poor brain was still wrapped up in sterile food packaging. The sight of a food not normally grown in my garden caused a small trauma, a befuddlement. Once I realized the danger of falling for corporate brainwashing, my defiance kicked in -- I ate the Amaranth leaves and de-befuddled my mind! And, by the way, Amaranth leaves do taste just like spinach.

Unfortunately, the grain harvest was not as successful as the leaves. Amaranth needs 90 to 100 days to grow, and my mistake was not planting the seed early enough. The grains were so tiny I had to use a magnifying glass and tweezers to find them, and then it was impossible to separate the grain from the plant material. Disappointing, but I learned a lot from Amaranth last year -- and, in 2010, I look forward to an abundant, healthy, and delicious Amaranth harvest.