Cooking itchiness

Submitted by gwolf on Sun, 05/04/2008 - 15:35.

Every now and then, I want to understand a bit better English. Today, when Joeyh mentioned nettle soup, I had to ask Wikipedia what a nettle is. And Joey, no wonder it itches... It refers to around 45 species of genus Urtica in the family Urticaceae - In Spanish, of course, urtica is known as ortiga, or as blind person's herb, as even a blind person will quickly recognize it to touch - Touching it will cause the apt-named urticaria, which Joey seems to have discovered and learnt to fear. At least in Spanish, urticaria is generalized and used to call all kinds of skin diseases.
It happens to be a very common plant in the area I live and dwell in (the ecological reserve REPSA spans a good portion of the University, and limits my neighbourhood), a large extension of Southern Mexico City where the lava of the small Xitle volcano covered everything, rendering a good portion of the Mexico City valley unfertile, known as malpaís (badland, literally).
Anyway... I don't think I'll rush to cut some ortigas and make them into soup, as both Joeyh and Wikipedia (Spanish and English versions) suggest. But it is always an option, having so many fine specimens around.
This posting serves no other purpose than to show my appreciation to the Mexico City Area

( categories: )

People eat them

Submitted by araqnid (not verified) on Sun, 05/04/2008 - 16:48.

People eat them too:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dorset/content/articles/2005/06/17/nettle_eating_fe...

as well as making wine or beer out of them.

They always give me the shivers. There were *huge* nettles growing next to the cemetery railings round the back of my parents' house when I was young.

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <br> <b> <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <blockquote> <img> <h1> <h2> <h3> <tt> <pre> <strike>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • You can enable syntax highlighting of source code with the following tags: <code>, <blockcode>. Beside the tag style "<foo>" it is also possible to use "[foo]".

More information about formatting options

CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
                __  __   _____             _ 
  _ __    ____ |  \/  | |___ /   ___    __| |
 | '_ \  |_  / | |\/| |   |_ \  / __|  / _` |
 | | | |  / /  | |  | |  ___) | \__ \ | (_| |
 |_| |_| /___| |_|  |_| |____/  |___/  \__,_|
Enter the code depicted in ASCII art style.