There are two occasions when eating, for me, a forgotten hole in my body is filled. The first when I ate digitata seaweed from this place>> Digitata seaweed and also after eating the first soupy Purple archangel of the season. Ahhh how I forget what spring tonics do to your overall feeling of well being. The minerals and "something other" that we can't get in decently domestic garden and grocery foods. There is a wildness that fills you and makes your lymphatic river run clear and cool. I love the aftertaste of life between my teeth and a release of the winter heaviness. Does anyone else hear and feel their gallbladder making a little squirt of joy after eating something like this? I love them.

My ridiculous healthy & delicious recipe for Purple Archangel, Dead Nettle, Lamium purpureum.

* Harvest about 10% of each patch, leave the rest for the bees. If you allow Purple Archangel to be your garden's cover crop, you will never be without this plant. However in the spring, with its new growth and violet flowers full of scarlet pollen carried in the clear pollen sack of the bees, I enjoy the harvest the most.

*Also Trim the new growth of the garlic chives that are now surely unfurling in your beds.

* In a second bowl, harvest the chickweed that is coming to life in your deliciously weedy garden.

* Loosely chop archangel. Saute in deep pan with coconut oil or lard, little pepper, onions and garlic chives (or ginger maybe?).

* 1/2 cover ingredients with a liquid. I used the pasta water that I saved from yesterday (perfect as a soup starter, nice viscosity). Salt with tamari.

* Simmer with lid 1/2 cocked to thicken for 20 plus minutes. The minerals are released into the broth, make sure to drink! Before serving, splash several times with homemade garlic or other herbal infused raw unpasteurized apple cider vinegar.

* In another pan, saute onions & garlic in 1/4 c local pasture raised butter and 1/4 tamari. When onions start to caramelize, turn pan off.

* chop chickweed.

*Serve cooked greens in a bowl with broth, top with caramelized onion glaze and fresh chopped chickweed.