Poke grows in the Ozarks, I have cooked it many times. You pick the leaves and boil in a large pot until mass reduced by 1/2 and color change to dark green. Drain and place in skillet with pork fat and fry . Best served with corn bread.
The stalks can be gathered cut into 5 inch pieces and boiled, when tender coat in corn meal and fry until golden brown.
The purple berries on the plant make great paint for children to use in play be aware that color will not wash off after a week or so color will began to fade from most wild Indians. This was the game we played when we painted our faces with poke berries. Needless to say our mother was not happy with this game.
One time in the 50ths My brother and I learned they were buying poke greens in town. We had a endless supply and money was in short supply so off we went with feed sacks to fine our weed.
In 3 hours we had a pile of poke in our yard and daddy removed the back seat in his Chevy and loaded our poke. First he culled our weeds saying they wont want these big stalks some of our stalks were as large as my father's arm.
Away he went carrying our weeds and dreams of wealth in that old Chevy coup. 2 hours later he returned with our money. We had made 50 dollars.
He said get back out in the field and gather more poke and I will pick up all this I culled and If you hurry I can make another trip before Villians closed at 5 O'clock.
We went back into the fields dragging my brother Clayton along to help.
Daddy made one more trip that day and all together we sold 90 dollars of poke weed. The market went bust that day and that was the end of our money making dreams. If they had kept buying I am sure that we would be millionaires today.
I am 68 years old but if I hear they are buying poke weed I will be out gathering the green leaves and red stalks.
4 comments:
Patsy, what a wonderful story of poke and starting a business (too bad the market fell short of your supply).
I think I have some growing along my fence line here in town.
I saw another blog with information about cooking poke and thought you might like to look at it. http://freemanstable.blogspot.com/
hence the song -- poke salad annie
I boil the poke through more than
one water and it soothes the strongness of the salad.
After the Civil War in Arkansas
families were literally straving
to death. Women would follow cow and what she ate the women would
pick and cook. They thought if it
was ok for the cow then it was ok
for people. Don't know if this is
true as the cow has more than one
stomache...well, that is what I have heard. I am sure Old Sister
knows the facts on this.
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