As I believe I've said before, plantain is one of my favorite plants! It's usually considered a weed and is very fond of lawns and any other place it can get enough water. It has medicinal uses. One more thing I like to use it for, it's seeds. There's no sense in wasting a resource and it's easy pickins.
Now, the seeds are small and it would take quite a bit to get a large store of them, but in many places there are large patches of the plant so that would be easy to do. Of course, this doesn't work quite as well in lawns since they are generally mowed and so the plants don't get to make seeds.
The seeds are produced all along a large stem. To harvest, I just pinch the stem in between my thumb and forefinger, with my hand cupped to catch the seeds, and run up the stem to strip the seeds. The narrow leaf variety has less seeds per stem, but the same basic idea. I throw the whole thing my harvest container, usually a jar or large plastic tub from some sort of food. It takes no time at all. When I get back to the house I run the contents of my container through a sieve to help winnow out the hulls. Easy peasy!
The seeds can be used in any way you'd use any other small seed. I usually just use them in soups and breakfast porridges but you could put them in/on bread or anything else. They are super tiny, although they do swell a bit in cooking, at least when cooked in liquids, not sure what they'd do in bread. The hulls can also be used like psyllium husks if desired. I sometimes throw them in soup as well. If I've been very lazy and haven't separated the hulls at all, I've been known to toss the whole mix into soup.
I don't know the exact benefits as far as what vitamins and such are in plantain seeds, but most seeds are quite nutritious so I'm sure these are as well. At the very least, we haven't died yet. :)
No comments:
Post a Comment