eating stinging nettle

[paul wheaton]

I've always been a meat eating guy that doesn't care much for greens, but I gotta tell ya, nettles taste damn good! And, it really hits the spot that meat hits. Nettles are apparently very high in protein. And provide all sorts of other nutritional stuff for ya.

I just think it tastes good. And the texture is really great!

And I like to find sissies that squirm away from the nettles and say "What, you don't like that? Hell, I eat that stuff!" -- I dunno ... I feel a little more manly.

So this video is a normal guy harvesting nettles the normal way. Harvest the nettles, and then cook or dry it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PO73lvid_MM

This crazy guy is putting the stuff right in his mouth! And check out that hair do!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpxMDeH1x5Y

[Dave Lenton]

I guess most foods seem strange until someone tries them. For example, I can't imagine what the first person to eat an egg was thinking at the time!

[Ashok Mash]

I think I will give it a go this weekend.

I am trying to distance myself from meat and fish (after watching a few videos on on how the fresh, locally produced meat and/or fish gets to the shelves - after all, they were all killed and at times rather mercilessly! Search for 'Death of a Tuna', or 'Dolphin slaughter in Japan' etc in YouTube - be warned, not for the squeamish!).
[ May 17, 2007: Message edited by: Ashok Mash ]

[paul wheaton]

How about the first guy to consume milk?

[Chris Baron]

Hmm,
i know stinging nettle tea for fasting.
Dandelion salad is acceptable and wood garlic has quite a hype here.
How do prepare the nettles? Like spinach?
cb

[Andrew Monkhouse]

Originally posted by Dave Lenton:
For example, I can't imagine what the first person to eat an egg was thinking at the time!

Originally posted by Paul Wheaton:
How about the first guy to consume milk?

I don't have a problem with either of these examples. If you were a hunter, and you found a bird protecting something (like an egg) then you might investigate - bird eggs being fragile, it wouldn't take long until you found what was inside, and from there it is an easy step forward. With milk, we generally start drinking milk once we are born - it is only a small step forward for someone to realize that milk (in general) must be a food, and try to get it from some domesticated mammals.

The one I have a problem with is wine. Admittedly it can't have been someone sitting down one day and saying "hey, why don't I stomp on these grapes, put them in a bottle, wait for them to 'go off' (my words :-)) then drink the result" - if you think about it like that, it is just too weird. But even so, somewhere along the line each of those steps took place, and someone drank the results.

Regards, Andrew

[Jim Yingst]

Wine doesn't seem that unlikely. Grapes are sweet to begin with, and it's not hard to imagine someone discovering that they could squeeze grapes into water and make grape juice, which tastes good right off the bat. Then If you leave it out in the open for a long enough time, under the right conditions, it can become wine. Someone was probably thirsty enough to try the odd-smelling old grape juice, and discovered its interesting properties. After that, lots of trail and error to discover and refine the process. Once the concept of fermentation was at least vaguely understood, they started trying it with a bunch of other ingredients too.

For that matter, wine from grapes may not have been first - maybe someone let a the village supply of oats get soaked with water, discovered weeks or months later. The poor hungry villagers had nothing else to eat, and ate it anyway. And got drunk from a crude beer. Who knows? Lots of possibilities there, especially if we postulate poor hungry people with no choice but to try to consume the "spoiled" food.

[Dave Lenton]

Cheese is the other odd one - fatty deposits from gone off milk. Who would think to eat that?

I saw a programme about this a while back, and the theory they had was that cheese used to form on the inside of the containers which milk was transported in. It wasn't scraped off as it would help make the containers water tight. I guess one day someone must have got a bit desperate and decided to give it a go.

[David O'Meara]

probably school students, they'll dare each other to eat anything.

[paul wheaton]

Cheese was accidentally discovered when somebody stored milk in a sheep's stomach. They then discovered that milk in this form lasted quite a long while.

Cheese is usually made with good (fresh) milk. Something (vinegar, citric acid, sheep gut, etc.) is added to make it coagulate.

[Bear Bibeault]

Mmmmm.... cheese.

[paul wheaton]

Here is a new vid I uploaded last night ...

and here is the vid i talked about at the beginning of this thread

[Jesper de Jong]

I did know cheese with stinging nettles, tea with stinging nettles, stinging nettle soup but I didn't know you could just eat them raw like that!

Does it not hurt?

[paul wheaton]

I guess it doesn't hurt if you do it right!

[Campbell Ritchie]

paul wheaton wrote:How about the first guy to consume milk?

By which you mean the first guy to have a mother??

[paul wheaton]

Okay - the first guy to consume cow's milk.

[Gregg Bolinger]

paul wheaton wrote:Okay - the first guy to consume cow's milk.

Cow's milk is great for making baby cows into adult cows. Human consumption of raw unpasteurized cow milk is dangerous. Especially considering all that cows are put through to produce their milk. Human consumption of pasteurized milk is pointless since the human body can't really absorb the calcium in it anyway. And isn't that why we're told to drink milk? Some studies have shown that today's cow milk can actually cause osteoporosis rather than prevent it.

Why don't we drink dog milk? Cat milk? Why do we bottle up cow milk but not human milk?

Back to the topic at hand, that was a really nice video. I enjoyed it quite a bit. One of your better one's Paul. You're getting good at this stuff.

[Steven Mann]

I got stung by a nettle once. Eating them doesn't sound so appealing.