Sutter's Mill Salad

At the end of 1848, 20 thousand miners had migrated to the western gold fields surrounding Sutter’s Mill. Not to be left out, New York native, Michael Shea had several options to get his piece of the action. After rejecting the 2,000 mile overland trip that risked disease and Indian attacks, and the 16,000 mile trip around Cape Horn to San Francisco he opted to take the 6,063 mile route to Panama across the Isthmus connecting to a steamer from Panama City to San Francisco. After weeks in a 4x6 foot “cabin”, weeks being transferred up the Chagris River by natives and a very long wait in Panama City for the next steamer he finally arrived in San Francisco and made his way to the action. When Shea arrived at the end of 1849, 100,000 men were in the gold fields and by 1852 that number had more than doubled. The overwhelming population in that relatively small area made healthy nutrition hard to come by. The most debilitating result of this problem was the outbreaks of scurvy. When spots on the skin, spongy gums, and bleeding from the mucous membranes started, not all the gold in California could help. Shea and his newfound friends found the solution to this plague from the local Indians; claytonia perfoliata.

This plant that became known as “miners lettuce” is indigenous to the cooler climates of Northern California’s central coast region. You can imagine my surprise (and embarrassment) when I realized that the pesky, white flowered plant that withers and dies when the spring sun gets strong and that I had been randomly removing from our property in the Carmel Valley has been the delicious, nutritious, Miner’s Lettuce.

Nutritious? How did it save Shea and his fellow miners? Why some 160 years later do the foragers search it out? Vitamin C! We take the supplements, we drink the juice, but few of us know that this wild grower is loaded with Vitamin C. Three ounces (and by the way 3 ounces is a lot of lettuce) had more, much more vitamin C than most fruits and vegetables.

Look at this table:

Good Sources of Vitamin C per 100 g

Red Pepper (raw) 190

Guava 100

Miner’s Lettuce 120

Kiwi 90

Broccoli (raw) 89

Brussell Sprouts (raw) 85

Papaya 60

Strawberry 60

Orange 50

Lemon 40

Cantaloupe 40

Cauliflower 40

Grapefruit 30

Spinach 30

Cabbage 30

By the looks of this chart my Miner’s Lettuce salad has more vitamin c than a fresh fruit salad. With large fleshy leaves, miner's lettuce is a small succulent annual plant. It’s hard to make a mistake in the garden when looking for it. At the top of its slender stalks are saucer-shaped leaves that completely encircle the stems, appearing to be one circular leaf. Small white to pinkish flower clusters appear slightly above the unique leaves. Oblong-shaped leaves grow near the base of the plant. It’s all edible! I pinch it off from the bottom and it has the feel of spinach. Lately I have been using it like any kind of lettuce, spinach, or arugala. The real foragers tell me that if the miner’s lettuce isn’t too close to automobile traffic it shouldn’t be washed at all. I’m not buying into that! I wash it and give it a ride in the salad spinner. I haven’t steamed it yet but I will soon. I am heading back to the valley this week to pick another large bunch. Now that the temperatures are rising, Miner’s Lettuce is getting ready to shrivel up until next year.

What else am I getting rid of in the garden that I could be eating?