The Gift of Horta

Description

I recently said "goodbye" to a dear friend. He left me many gifts, but one that I enjoy almost every day is horta. May this inspire you to add more wild greens to your diet!

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Tags: Kenton Whitman,ReWild University,Human Rewilding,personal rewilding,mindfulness,how to,bushcraft,survival,wilderness survival skills,how to survive in the woods,wild greens,wild edibles,edible wild plants,Greek horta

Video Transcription

this video is a tribute to a dear friend of mine Jerry Jerry simo he died about two weeks ago yeah he was very very dear to my heart he's 84 years old and I got to see him about four times a week and he was a Greek and he taught me a lot of things and I'm just going to share one of those things with you today it's it's Horta and you know we've we've probably all heard of the Mediterranean diet and how good it is for us and and it certainly is but one thing that's missing in the Americanized version of that that diet is Horta and you know I would be walking along and you look down at dandelion greens and he'd say that's Horta oh so good and he would he would talk about it being just boiled up and then mixed with some olive oil and lemon juice and salt and and now that was a staple food and the key with or done that it's made of wild greens it's going to be just full of nutrition impact with amazing flavors so I took about 10 minutes collected some more time and this is just a way to encourage everybody to start experimenting with wild edible smart this is a lot of food and it's going to be a major side dish for our family tonight and really it took me about 10 minutes together and and of course there's totally free it's going to add so much to our meal this isn't going to be an ID session i'm not going ID these plants there's plenty of good field guides out there and maybe at some point i'll do something more in-depth but the thing is that i've always been a forager but sometimes it's hard to get motivated to go out and gather the greens but somehow when Jerry called it porta put a name on to it it became easier because now we have you know in our family we have this this word Horta and and rebecca my wife can say oh let's have Horta tonight and and then it's easy to go out and gather it because it's become you know it's a dish it's a meal and it's not just a kind of a scattered gathering of green things this is filled with watercress and virginia water leaf and and bitter doc and curly doc and dandelion and nettles chickweed winter kress all kinds of amazing things in here and what I'm going to do is I'm going to take this back inside try not to lose too much of it to the wind here and I'm going to put it into a pot I don't have to cover it with water I'm just going to put in maybe a cup cup and a half of water and in steam boil it for about 10 minutes and then drain that liquid off I like to keep the liquid it's sometimes it can be kind of bitter but to me it feels like a tonic so I usually drink it as a sort of tea and then olive oil over the top the juice of maybe half a lemon just a little sprinkling of salt and it's delicious sometimes it has some some bitter flavors in there but you really start to crave those after a while even my two-year-old she is she just goes for this stuff she can't get enough of it in fact I have to gather so much because this cooks down a lot remember and you know I start with a lot here but I'll probably have about a third of that when it's all cooked up and she'll often eat like most of it she's too so so if she enjoys that taste probably most of us will give a Horta a try it's a just a great way to frame it in your mind and to get yourself to get out and start learning and gathering more wild animals and thanks to Jerry Josie mophir for bringing this into my life enjoy let me know if you give it a try and if you like it