The hunt for purslane

When I was a child there were two bushes in front of our house. Along with needle-like thorns they bore the very reddest of berries. My parents impressed upon me that these berries were not to be touched. I was not to eat them. I was not to give them to anybody else to eat. They were poison.

Some children might have found them irresistible as a result, the delicious temptation of the forbidden fruit (and wouldn't you have expected G-d to know better as he stocked his Garden of Eden, but I digress.) I however had the opposite reaction. I developed an aversion to eating anything I see growing in anybody's garden. Don't bring me your home-grown tomatoes or zucchini, I won't touch them. And I would never, ever eat a mushroom that didn't come wrapped in cellophane, no matter how expert the hand that picked it.

So one day last week a friend, a fellow American expatriate, breezed in to tell me all about her new discovery of purslane. It's a common weed that's edible, she said, and what is more, it's a good source of omega-3. This got my attention. Omega-3 is the stuff we're all encouraged to eat fish for or at least to plop down hundreds of shekels for the capsule form. And purslane is free. After providing me with a sample of what to look for growing in the dirt, she breezed out, leaving me with a dilemma.

After some searching, I found what I think may be purslane growing by the lamp post in front of a neighbor's house. I pulled a few plants out of the ground and stuck them in a pot of dirt where they are growing nicely. And quickly. They're tough little plants to be doing so well after such rough treatment, all of which makes me suspicious. What if I got the wrong plants? What if they're not edible at all? What if they're poison? You can see my dilemma: on the one hand, free omega-3. On the other hand, agonizing death by alkaloid poisoning. Do I dare try it? Tonight I chopped and sprinkled a bit of it on my cottage cheese. The taste is rather lawnish, but no worse that parsley. Did I get it right? Only time will tell.