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- [Woman] Okay, would you like to taste any?
- [Man] Sure, I'd like to taste one little piece.
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Very nice.
- Yeah.
Do you wanna try a piece?
It's in the mustard family, the leaves themselves
are very picante and spicy,
so they are very edible raw or cooked.
And it's already gone to seed in certain cases,
you could harvest the seeds and make your own mustard.
So yeah a great way to get a lot of seasonal food
into your diet and high-powered nutrition.
(violin music)
My name is Jill Lorenzini
and I work for a non-profit group
in Tucson called Desert Harvesters.
The food bank hires myself and others
to teach demonstrations here to offer free education
to people who come to the market
and are interested in healthy foods
and also food security and water security.
- I'd like that chollas, I don't know how to use chollas.
- Well today the demo is on wild greens
but I've also brought barrel cactus fruit
because they happen to be in season
so in winter there was a demo on barrel cactus.
Right now as we enter early spring,
it's wild greens like mustard.
(violin music)
- I think it's great that we have educators
who are here to show us this because when I was younger
we had a lot more desert in Tucson back then.
I had the blessing of having a grandmother
who would show me and she was very good about
taking us out and holding the bag
as she was cutting nopales or pulling the purslane.
She'd probably find nothing of it,
because that's just what they did.
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(machine whizzing)
- Didn't know anything about them
except for that they were weeds.
And when I think of a weed, I think of that.
I call them dandelions but I don't think they're dandelions
'cause I know a dandelion's a little bigger.
And I had no idea they were edible
so yeah that's a shock to me,
I thought they were poisonous.
In fact most of the weeds
that I've ever run across I thought were poisonous.
I might never attempted to put them in my mouth.
Now if somebody just went ahead and put them in my salad,
and I tasted them and maybe I wouldn't even consider it.
'Cause most my salads are always covered in ranch dressing,
ranch hides a multitude of sins apparently.
(laughs)
- It's a thrill to interact with the public this way
because I think people are looking for tools,
looking for a way to feel connected to place.
That's what moves me, and so any time I can offer that up
for people and hear their stories and share food,
I mean that's the basic way that we get to know one another
and it feeds me too, you know.
- [Man] Are you gonna look at weeds a different way now?
(laughs)
- I will look at more weeds for sure,
'cause I did not know about the London, yeah.
- For a limited time 'cause they'll be wilted by tomorrow,
I have a whole pile of 'em in my backyard
so you can come back and get 'em if you're interested.
(laughs)
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