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Eat Your Weeds: Magenta Spreen

The monsoon season in the Southwest US  can mean mud in the living room or gold in the kitchen.

If you’ve built or bought a house at the bottom of a hill where three arroyos come together, you’ve probably experienced mud.  If you use common sense and work with Nature, you’re likely the happy recipient of nutritional gold.

One of the golden secrets is to look at what grows well where you live, do some homework to find out what’s good and what isn’t, and then, without spewing toxic chemicals on everything in the yard except the grass you’ve been nurturing, you’ll probably have healthful foods right outside your door.  One thing we can all agree on when the rains come, is the mosquitoes really don’t need to suck us dry every time we leave the house.  There are natural alternatives to toxic chemicals for that too.

When taking people to Canada for fly fishing I try to tell them, if they’re using chemical based insect repellents, not to spray it on the face of their watches or the lenses of your glasses.  The chemicals etch plastics and you have to throw the watch or glasses away.  Think about what it does to your body.

The majority of those who experience severe reactions to West Nile virus and some of the other diseases that mosquitoes carry, are usually health compromised.  They may smoke, eat an unhealthful diet, drink excessively and exercise little, if at all.  All unhealthful choices compromise the immune system.  Mosquito borne viruses exacerbate every preexisting health problem.

Recently, I was told a story about an old homesteader in the Wilcox, AZ area.  He was upset because his grandson was spraying, and paying, to have weeds killed on the land the man had homesteaded.  The homesteader said if it hadn’t been for the weeds, the grandson was trying to eradicate, the grandson wouldn’t have a farm.  The weeds were lambsquarters and the only things the old homesteader and his wife had to eat during a period of severe drought many years prior.

Common lambsquarters, Chenopodium album, are a summer annual that grows to about 3 1/2 feet tall.  The leaves are light green, triangular, from 1/14 to 10 inches long and are on a long stem.  The plant is capable of producing thousands of seeds and will spread rapidly under the right conditions.  The stems are light green, erect, hairless and have varying degrees of red.  The roots are short with many small side roots and easily pulled from moist or wet ground, but can be broken off if the ground is dry.  The plant will often resprout from the broken root.  The flowers are green and inconspicuous and occur from June through September. The seeds are covered with a thin papery coating.  Lambsquarters are a close relative of red pigweed (Amaranth reflexus) and spinach. 

Common lambsquarters are very high in Vitamin A, high in Vitamin C, moderate in calcium and low in iron.  They’re also high in fiber but low in calories and fats.  Lambsquarters contain known anti-inflammatory nutrients, including Beta Carotene and Vitamin K.  They also contain carbohydrates, which may increase blood sugar levels.  Common lambsquarters are low in protein percentages but high in many amino acids.  The vitamin and mineral profile reads like a who’s who of healthful foods.

Another variety is Chenopodium giganteum, magenta spreen, giant lambsquarters or quelites in Spanish.  We’ve had seven foot plants growing in our rich garden soil.  They make good shade and windbreaks, as well as being great in salads or when lightly steamed.  Magenta spreen is also a close relative to spinach and is very showy with magenta, purple, lilac and green leaves.  We planted a row on the west side of one garden for wind protection a year ago.  Although considered rare, we now have a carpet of small colorful leaves growing in most of the yard and out next to the road.
 
A native of India, magenta spreen is cultivated in China and other Asian countries as well as Europe.  Even though there are other chenopodiums native to the Americas, magenta spreen isn’t one of them.

Magenta spreen is rich in vitamins A and C, calcium and iron. Like other chenopodiums, spinach, chard and a number of other vegetables, magenta spreen contains oxalic acid. Some people are hesitant to eat spinach and other crops containing oxalic acid because they’ve heard it prevents assimilation of calcium and iron. The malabsorption of calcium and iron is limited to the crops that contain oxalic acid and doesn’t prevent the assimilation of minerals in other foods we may eat.

Larry Miller: I was born in Los Angeles in 1940. My father was a fighter pilot instructor during WWll and we moved from coast to coast, maybe that’s where I got the nomad in my blood. After graduating from high school in 1958 I joined the Marines. That lifestyle wasn’t for me and upon my discharge I went on with my life, and have never looked back. I worked briefly for a Caterpillar dealer in Riverside, CA before moving back to N. California where I was a welder and truck driver for a chemical company. Truck driving wasn’t my calling anymore than being in the Marines, and I went back to work for another Caterpillar dealer steam cleaning dirty tractor parts and welding. They sent me to schools, lots and lots of schools. I spent as much time going to trade schools as I did at work. I went from cleaning parts to apprentice field mechanic, to mechanic to the parts department to satellite store manager in less than two years. They wanted me to move to Sacramento and be a salesman: I moved to Oregon to learn to commune with nature. I went to work for another heavy equipment dealer and was later contacted by the World’s largest Lorraine Crane dealer and offered the position of purchasing agent and general parts manager. In 1967 I was offered a line of automotive parts and supplies and went into business for myself. My business revolved around eleven race cars that we maintained for others, driving race cars professionally and maintaining high end sports cars. I was a championship and regional champion driver. My business was the largest import parts and service, non dealer, in the state until I sold it in 1979. We went sailing in 79, first to Mexico and then Hawaii. I was an award winning Trans-Pacific sailor and sailor of the year, Hawaii, Island of Kauai. An opportunity presented itself in Hawaii during 1981 and I was back in business, importing Japanese auto body and hard parts. I also felt the pull to write and began freelancing for magazines and newspapers in 1982. My main focus in my articles is, and always has been, health, wellness and fitness. Most of us have heard the saying, “Time is all we have.” I disagree. Our health is all we have, because without our health, we have no time. I was a US Olympic team hopeful in racewalking and held all the records for the state of Hawaii. As a sponsored athlete in my forties, I finished first in nine marathons in a row in my division, qualified for the Ironman® and was the state USCF cycling champion five times in Hawaii and Oregon. Celinda and I were married in 1988 after a three year engagement. We sold our businesses and organic farm and sailed back to Oregon. After our sailboat boat was sold, we moved to Joseph, Oregon, two miles from the trailhead into the Eagle Cap Wilderness. We were caregivers for my mother the last ten years she was alive. We moved to New Mexico in 1995 because it was too cold for my mom in Oregon during the winters. Celinda designed, and I engineered and built our strawbale house. I began writing the weekly health column for a local newspaper in 1996, and still do. In 2000, I took the summer off to do a four month, 4000 mile, hike, bike and kayak odyssey. I’d been writing health, fitness and sports articles since 1982 and the journey produced a full-length, nonfiction, first person adventure book, Yol Bolsun, May There Be A Road, which can be bought from Amazon.com and others over the Internet. The summer of 2001 was spent hiking. kayaking, fishing and exploring the southwest. In 2002 Celinda and I spent the summer in Canada learning the hospitality business at a resort in preparation for doing promotion for the resort in the US. Most of 2003 was spent reestablishing the trees and landscape that had died during the stay in Canada. We had a house sitter and the house sitter had an ex-husband, and that’s a long story. In July of 2004 I did a solo kayak trip on the Snake River, taking pictures, writing articles and pencil sketching the journey. I hope to do another kayak adventure on the Snake River during the summer of 2008, on the section I missed in 2000 and 2004. In 2005, I returned to Canada to the resort where we’d spent 2002. I was supposed to be there for the month of June. I’d contacted people I’d met in 2002 and they came back to Canada to fish, hike and spend time at the resort, Echo Valley Ranch and Spa, while I was there. My one month became five and then it was off to Spain to do the El Camino de Santiago as a travel companion with one of the guests who’d returned to Canada in June. During the summer of 2006 a friend from Ireland, who I’d met in Spain the year before, came to visit in NM and we fished, hiked and explored the White Mountains of AZ. He’d never slept out in the wild in a tent before, and it was quite an experience, for both of us. My newspaper articles were put on the Internet beginning in 2002. I was asked to give public speaking engagements, photo and video presentations, on various subjects for the library in Deming, NM and continue to do so. In 2006 I videoed and produced a DVD for the Smithsonian Institute’s travel exhibit “Between Fences.” NMFILMS had a conference by invitation only, which I attended. While attending the conference, I realized that film making wasn’t what I wanted to do but I still wanted to use my sixteen years of experience and enjoyment of videoing and photography. During the winter of 2005, I discovered that no one on record had ever run from the Arizona border to the Texas border, a distance of 165 miles. During the spring and summer of 2006 I trained for the run and the run was completed in October, 2006. In late 2005, I began building and maintaining websites incorporating all the things I enjoyed about video, photography, travel and the out of doors. 2007 has been a summer of upgrading the home and property which resulted in a downgrading of my enthusiasm for being located in one place. If we don’t like what’s happening in our life, we need to change what we’re doing. Celinda and I are ready to pull up roots and move on. I guess I’ve come full circle. I’m ready to revert back to my childhood, and a nomadic lifestyle.
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