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Dinner may be just outside your door 2016-04-17 - Along an Adair County Roadway - Photo by Linda Waggener. On a flower check know-your-county-better tour, we noticed this just-past-prime poke plant. Eating poke sallet, or a variation, fried poke, used to be a ritual of spring. Now it comes with a precaution: With the advent of poisoning by the road departments of the City of Columbia, Adair County, and the Commonwealth - as well as on boring, chemically treated lawns - knowing whether properly prepared dishes of the spring delicacy are safe to eat is a real and present health concern. Time was, when most meals were harvested just before eating, the plant was at least a small part of the diet in this area. Poke doesn't fit every pallet, but served as a pork seasoned mixed green, corn meal battered and fried, or skillet fried in a thickened gravy - in the manner the late Elaine Harvey Bennett perfected - and always served with cornbread, one of life's great simple pleasures. - EW Permalink | Comments?

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