Bears and Poke Salad/Poke Salat

[Ray Ford]

I recently posted, in another place, that a couple of friends and I had had a close encounter with what we believed to be a Bear in the Talahina, Oklahoma, area.  We were camped by a small pond on top of one of the area mountains.  We believe a bear approached the pond but retreated when he/she sensed our presence.  

The camp site could only be reached over a primitive road several miles long--and there were very few places along that road where two cars could pass each other.  When we left the camp, we continued down this primitive road until it rejoined a paved road.  On the way out, we drove past numerous patches of Poke Salad.  In each of these patches, the Poke was broken down and pushed about as though an animal had been in them.  I did not observe any indication that the Poke had been eaten.  Large stalks would be broken over, but would be otherwise intact.  The berries and leaves would still be there.  At or near almost every one of these distrubed patches of Poke, there would be Bear scat in the road.

Being a newcomer to Bear, Cougar, and Big Foot observing, I have a question:  Are Bears attracted to Poke Salad and why?  I have speculated, since Poke tends to grow around rotting logs old buildings, that the Bears could be looking from Grubs in and under the rotting wood?  

I have no doubt that what had distrubed the Poke patches, given the abundant scat, were Bears.

Two other things:  Raw Poke is poison.  Before it can be eaten, it must be boiled and the water strained off.  And how do you spell Poke/Polk Salad?
My Granny always pronounced it exactly as she did the word for the bag, or poke, that she put it in when it was picked.

Do Big Feet like Poke Salad?

[Telahnay's g'son]

poke salat

[bullet maker]

Poke Salat/Poke Salad == Either is correct.  Poke Salat is the German derivitive used mostly in the Ozark area, and the American version is Poke Salad.  Like most things in our language there is more than one way that is correct.

Bullet Maker

[mjbgalt]

heh heh heh....thought you were talking about baiting bears with PORK salad when i read the title.


     

that was funny.

-Matt

[John]

Reminds me of a funny story. Ol' Gus, on Lonesome Dove was always wantin' a poke from the little gal, I think Lorena was her name. My girls were young when that was on the TV, but they weren't too young to understand just what ol' Gus was after. Anyway, that's the background.

We had a family friend that moved to NE Oklahoma from a suburb of Chicago around then, and she asked me to take her to the woods behind the house and show her what poke looked like, and to help her pick a mess. She had heard that it was a good spring tonic, and I had told her that I picked some now and then in the spring.

My girls came home from wherever they had been and noticed the ladies car in the drive, but when they came into the house, she wasn't here. They asked my wife where she was, and my wife told them that she was in the woods with me gettin' some poke........well, my girls had a fit, they thought it was the same poke that ol' Gus was always after.

[Ray Ford]

TG'son, BM, John, and all,

Glad for the information on the spelling.  Spelling is not one of my strong points.  In fact, I don't have very many strong points.  But, no one has answered the primary question about poke salad/poke salat:  Are Bears attracted to the plant and why?

John, I appreciated your story.  I'll tell you a couple.  I had two women in my church at Wetumka, Oklahoma, who had birthdays in the same week.  One was an elderly woman--possibly the best looking old woman that I've every seen.  The other was a young mother.  The older woman had acquired some poke salad and called the younger woman to ask if she would like to have some of it.  The younger woman accepted the offer and, hearing poke SALAD like I always have, took it home and incorporated it into a tossed salad--without the cooking and straining process that makes it safe to eat.  At dinner that evening, she ate a "bait" of the salad.  ("Bait" is a word that my Granny would have used.)  Her husband and children did not eat any of the salad.  Before the evening was over, the young woman was in the hospital being treated for a serious case of poisoning.

A few weeks later, in church, we were recognizing the two woman for their birthdays.  (Small churches often do that.)  I jokingly raised the issue of looks, commenting that the older woman looked the best.  My Lay Leader, commented, "Blanche cooks her poke salad."

Another story has nothing to do with poke, but your childrens' reaction to your being in the woods for "poke" with the lady reminded me of it.  One Sunday, as I taught my SS class at a church in Tulsa, I looked at my watch, a very cheap digital.  When I couldn't read it, I commented that I needed to get a "real watch."  Later that week, two women members of the class came by the parsonage and gave me a new watch--with an almost $200 price tag on it.  They admonished me to tell no one but my wife that they had given it to me.  My wife came home, and I told her about the gift.  She looked at it and sat it down on a table.  Later, my adopted son--he was some 12 or 13 but young for his age--came home.  He picked up the watch and, addressing my wife, said, "What's this?"  My wife replied, "A watch."  He said, "Where did it come from?"  She replied, "Two women brought it by to Dad."  He demanded, "Who were they?"  She replied, "I don't know"--telling a little fib.  He then said, "Well, if two women bring Dad a $200 watch, don't you think you had better check into it?"

I may, at some point, get accustomed to "poke salet," but....

[Echo4Lima]

MJ that made me laugh!! Thank You!!

[Ray Ford]

And still, no one has answered my question:  Are bears attracted to poke salad/salat and why?

[Graybeard]

Probably no one here knows. I would guess yes for the berries and maybe even for the leaves. How much of an over lap there is in the range of bears and poke tho I'm not sure.

[Echo4Lima]

OK, what the hack is POKE SALAD"?  I only know its a lyric in a song...."Poke salad Annie, gator got your granny"....

[Graybeard]

Poke is a plant (weed to those of us who don't want it) that grows wild all over the south. It has a kinda purple looking stalk when mature that is over an inch in diameter and it has large numbers of purple berries on it that the birds love and I suppose bears might also.

All parts of the plant are poisonous to humans but some folks eat the fresh new leaves from poke when boiled and most often mixed with other greens such as turnip or mustard.

[Ray Ford]

Gray and Echo,

I was recently told that poke salad/salat should be boiled three times with the water being strained off each time.  This eliminates the poison.
I have heard of it being mixed with eges--much like the Indian dish of eggs and wild onions.  I wonder if the knowledge of poke and how to prepare it did not also originate with Indians?  

My almost-eighty sister just told me this:  Start the poke in cold water and bring it to a boil.  Allow it to boil, gently pushing the greens down into the water, until the water turns green.  Strain off that water and repeat the process--boiling 2 times.  Then, she said that she put onions with bacon/bacon grease into a skillet and slightly fried it.

It is, she said, a very good green that is good for your health.  Stella, my sister, learned much of her cooking knowledge from my mother, Bessie, and our aunt, Ora.  Bessie and Ora were born in Big Coon Valley in Jackson County, Alabama, and lived their adult lives as poor farm wives in Oklahoma.  They tended to utilize anything ediable.

A caution: Once while cleaning a fence with a string trimer, I was hit in the eye with a piece of poke plant.  I've had everything from dirt to saw dust to steel in my eyes, but I've never had anything hurt as badly as that chunck of poke did.  The moral of that story is to wear your protective glasses when using a trimer--especially when cutting poke.

[Echo4Lima]

Thank You G B!! I learned something.