Wild Garlic Walk / 行者ニンニクを採りに公園へ(My Actifit Report Card: April 15 2024)

The weather has warmed up early this year, and I feel like the wild garlic is in season early. I found a bush the other day when I went for a walk and wanted to go pick some leaves for cooking. It's a specialty in this season in Germany as well as Spargel (white asparagus).

Yesterday, I had a chance to stretch my legs in the park and got some leaves. In consideration of the ecosystem and also because it is a public place, we must carefully picked only the leaves that I would use, not the roots.

Wild garlic is said to be similar to "lily of the valley", which is poisonous, so we need to be careful. Every year, whenever I go to pick wild garlic, my partner, who does not even touch the soil or cook, annoyingly asks me to be careful with lily of the valley. In fact, there have been deaths, so we need to be careful, but if the flowers are in bloom, we can just pick the leaves by following the stems of the flowers.

It was interesting that in Germany, the country of forests and gardening, kids are taught from early on not to mistake the two, and my daughter knew this already. She said she learned it when they went to visit a botanical garden.

Here are photos how wild garlic grows in the park I took walk. In some countries, it seems to be a delicacy, and there have been cases of people taking large amounts of it, which has caused problems.

They were competing with nettles. According to my daghter, nettles can be eaten raw, and once she tried to feed me nettle leaves. But they have so many thorns that I didn't have the courage to do so. I like nettle tea, though, and always have some on hand.

I walked around the park and enjoyed the view. I came to this park often with my daughter sleeping on her baby buggy. It was the most peaceful way for us to spend first months.

The park has the Germany's largest zoo attached to it, and before the grass gets taller, we can see the animals from outside without having to enter the zoo. It's called Zoo Fenster (zoo window), and I used to come here with my daughter to say hello to animals. Her favorite was ostriches.

German cookbooks have recipes for wild garlic and I look forward to exploring new recipes 😊

Have a nice week everyone!

今年は早くから暖かくなり、行者ニンニクの旬が早い気がします。先日散歩に行った時に茂みを見つけて、採りに行って料理に使いたいなと思っていました。昨日、公園に足を伸ばす機会があり、葉っぱをいただいてきました。生態系への配慮と、あと公共の場ということもあり、根っこから抜くのはNG、ていねいに葉っぱを使う分だけ採ります。

行者ニンニクは、毒のあるスズランとも似ているので注意が必要と言われています。毎年、行者ニンニクを採りに行くたびに、土にさえ触らない、料理もしない相方に「採っていいのか」「スズランと間違わないように」と口煩く言われイラっとするのは内緒です。実際死者が出ていて、注意は必要なのですが、花が咲いていれば、花の茎をたどって葉を採ればいいので、そんなに毎年言わなくてもと思うのです。

ちなみに森の国ドイツでは行者ニンニクとスズランを間違わないように早くから教えられるらしく、子供は既に知っていました。植物園を見学に行った時に習ったとのこと。

どんな風に行者ニンニクが生えているかというと・・・行者ニンニクだらけです。国によっては珍味のようで、大量にとっていってしまう人がいて問題になったこともあるとか。

イラクサと競い合っていました。子供曰くイラクサは生でも食べられるらしいのですが、とげがすごくて私にはその勇気はありません。お茶は好きで常備しているんですけどね。

せっかくなので広い公園をぐるっと一周歩いて帰ってきました。良い眺め。子供が赤ちゃんの頃に、何をして時間を使ったらいいかわからず、ベビーカーを押しながら延々と散歩をした日々が懐かしいです。

公園には動物園が併設されていて、草が茂る前だと入園しなくても動物を外から見られます。Zoo Fensterと呼ばれていて、ここにも子供とよく来ました。

行者ニンニクが手に入って、懐かしい散歩コースを散歩して、良い散歩になりました。ドイツの料理本には行者ニンニクのレシピが載っていて、新しいレシピを開拓するのが楽しみです😊

それではみなさん、良い一週間を！
This report was published via Actifit app (Android | iOS). Check out the original version here on actifit.io

Walking