Monday, January 17, 2011

Boiled Pigwood Greens -- Yum??

From the book, "Henry Savage and his Family" by Josephine Savage Jones:



Ebenezer Savage was born 18 May, 1857, at Little Cottonwood, Salt Lake County, Utah.  He was the tenth child born to Henry and Sarah Savage.  It had been three years since the family had emigrated to Salt Lake City from their native London, England.   After a year in the city, they moved to Cottonwood, hoping to better themselves by living on a piece of land large enough to raise their own breadstuff.  The three years they spent in that area proved to be some of the leanest they had known.  There was an invasion of grasshoppers that lasted through the years 1854 to early 1857.  Just before the 1857 harvest, the food shortage was very acute.  For six weeks after Ebenezer's birth the family subsisted on boiled pigweed greens with an occasional biscuit—truly no adequate diet for a nursing mother and her babe.  Yes, those were impoverished years and hard to erase from their minds, but through faith and proven endurance, they survived.  Little Eb grew and was nourished by love of which there was no famine.

I googled the term boiled pigwood and discovered that Native Americans had been using this plant in a variety of ways.  I saw some websites that compared the taste to spinach.  The seeds were also used in the making of bread.

"Little Eb" was my great grandfather.  I'm fortunate to have a copy of this book on CD as it puts "flesh on the bones" for my Savages. 


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