Give Me Sorrel or Give Me Death

Fresh local greens are back. Finally. It was a long, potato and onion-filled winter, but now I’m gorging on fresh locally grown spring salad mix, spinach, and baby bok choy. Sure, I’ve had some store bought salad mix since that hard frost back in October, but it’s not the same (you’re lucky if lasts two days after you buy it and it’s kind of flaccid even when it’s fresh).
However, there is one green that I love for which I must wait patiently until spring. Because it starts to deteriorate so quickly after harvest, most supermarkets don’t bother carrying it. I can only find it at farmer’s markets or in my own garden. And there really is nothing else out there that compares with its lemony, acidic bite. Sorrel is my pay off for surviving the winter on root crops.
My mom was the one who introduced sorrel (Rumex acetosa) into my life. We always had a huge patch of it in the garden and she would make pots and pots of sorrel soup every spring. It was one of her favorites and she passed on her love of it to me.
I figured I would write this whole article about the wonders of this fine plant, where it originated from, and what chemical composition created its unique lemony flavor, thereby passing on my passion for sorrel to the Sandpoint community.
I did a bit of research and found that sorrel has been cultivated since the 16th century and is great in soups and as a sauce for fish. I learned that it is related to rhubarb and buckwheat. I found out that the sour bite I love so much is due to sorrel’s high oxalic acid content.
And then I learned that oxalic acid is poisonous. My mom wasn’t trying to pass on her love, she was trying to kill me, and while I’m the first to admit I was kind of a trying child, especially during my teenage years, I couldn’t believe she’d try to off me with sorrel.
Were there other foods she was trying to sneak into my diet to aid in my slow poisoning?
We’d have rhubarb pie every spring and rhubarb is also high in oxalic acid. It’s most concentrated in the leaves of the plant, not the stalk, and as far as I could tell she never slipped any leaves into my piece of pie.
Did she really not like lima beans or did she always give me her serving for nefarious reasons? Lima beans and other beans contain protease inhibitors and lectins that can interfere with proper absorption of nutrients in the digestive track and bring on symptoms of food poisoning. These toxins are inactivated by thorough cooking, but weren’t those lima beans always a bit on the crunchy side?
Was she feeding me too many alkaloids? Alkaloids are bitter tasting and toxic. Caffeine, nicotine, and quinine are a few common alkaloids. Green potatoes and potato sprouts are especially high in poisonous alkaloids, but Mom never served sprouting potatoes. She has always been a big fan of coffee and vodka tonics (tonic water gets its bitter flavor from quinine) but never pushed these on me as a kid. She did try to get me addicted to coffee soda for a while, but she was drinking more of it than me. Maybe she was using some other food to do me in.
Maybe it was the bamboo shoots? She would always add them to her delicious stir-fries. Bamboo shoots, if not properly prepared, contain high levels of cyanogens. Cyanogens break down in the body into hydrogen cyanide and can cause cyanide poisoning. I’m sure I saw her take them out of a can and I would guess the manufacturer made sure they were cyanide-free, but I can’t be sure.
She always encouraged me to eat lots of citrus, stone, and pome fruits, the seeds of which are high in cyanide generating chemicals, but at the same time she did advise me not to eat the seeds. Was Mom using some kind of reverse psychology on me? Did she secretly want me to chew my apple seeds?
All those interesting and not necessarily kid-friendly flavors that Mom had me try might have been another way for her to introduce toxins into my diet. Glycyrrhizin, the sweet flavor in licorice root, could have raised my blood pressure to dangerous levels. Coumarin in lavender could have interfered with blood clotting. And myristicin in nutmeg could have made me hallucinate so I wouldn’t notice any of it.
She may even have gotten my dad involved. Dad was the grill master in the family. Was he introducing too many PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) into my meat when he was barbecuing? PAHs are carcinogens that are formed when wood burns and are carried into the meat if it is cooked over high heat in an enclosed environment. But wouldn’t everyone’s meat be tainted, not just mine? And didn’t we have a gas grill with no wood to form PAHs?
Maybe I’m just being paranoid. Maybe my parents were trying to expose me to a wide range of foods and flavors to expand my palette, not poison me. Maybe my parents wanted to pass on their love of good food as a way to show their love for me, despite what a royal pain in the butt I was. And if that’s the case, I’m off to make a big pot of sorrel soup.

Vicki Reich lives in Sagle and loves her mom. She doesn’t believe for a second her mom ever actually tried to poison her (although she definitely had just cause) and only used the idea for entertainment purposes.

Sorrel Soup
Serves 4

1 tbls. Butter
1 large onion, chopped
4 c. chicken broth
1-2 large potatoes, peeled and diced (more potatoes makes a creamier soup)
3 c. chopped sorrel
Salt and pepper to taste
Plain yogurt or sour cream for garnish

Heat butter in a stock pot over medium high heat until melted. Add onion and sauté for five minutes or until the onion softens. Add the broth and potato. Bring to a boil then lower heat to a simmer. Simmer until potato is soft, 20-30 minutes. Add sorrel and simmer for 10 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste. Puree in batches in a blender or in the pot with an immersion blender. Serve hot or cold with a dollop of yogurt or sour cream.