Tar, porridge and purple bushes: what children of the 90s ate on the street

Nettle

Some were afraid of nettles like fire, while others chewed it calmly. Young leaves of this plant do not burn at all and are quite pleasant to the taste. The main thing is to get close to them.

As a child, I ate almost everything that grew in the country, not limited to berries and fruits. Those who have not tried the young leaves of nettles, currants and raspberries have lost a lot.

Elena Zeleneva web analyst at Lifehacker

Barberry

Barberry is often planted as a hedge along the road. It is a bush with reddish-purple leaves that are sour and slightly prickly at the edges. Of course, all sorts of nasty things from the road settle on them, but who cares. By the way, red leaves were considered tastier than green ones.

Larch

Soft larch needles taste sour. You probably remember.

Lungwort

If you pull out a small flower, the white tip will be sweet.

Rogoz

Many people call this plant that lives near the water, reeds. To make the stem edible, it was necessary to pull it out of the water and get to the white root part.

We ate wormwood, nettle, sedge, cattail. Young nettle leaves did not burn the tongue, and if you pluck it, crushing the hairs on the leaves, then your hands did not burn.

Anastasia Pivovarova author of Lifehacker

Rowan

From these berries they made beads, sewing them with a thread, threw them, crushed them and, of course, ate them. It was said that it was necessary to wait for the frost for the mountain ash to become sweet. But childhood and patience are not very compatible.

Clover

Clover flowers, of course, are not very sweet, but that did not stop us. You pull out a flower and eat its white tip.

Lilac flowers

Lilacs were eaten not for the sake of taste, but for the sake of a higher goal. There was such a belief: if you find a flower with five petals, make a wish and eat a flower, then your dream will surely come true.

Wild apples (ranetki)

The terribly sour and slightly astringent taste of the little apples did not stop anyone. We collected whole handfuls of these fruits: we ate half and threw away half. Apples were generally considered edible as soon as the diameter of the fruit exceeded a centimeter. Greens with salt were a special delicacy.

There were legends that “one girl ate unripe apples, and she had a stomach ache,” but no one has ever seen this girl.

We climbed trees for ranetki (everyone except me: this was not given to me even as a child). We collected several pieces, wiped them with clothes and ate.

Irina Novikova Sales Manager of Lifehacker

Bird cherry

She had an astringent taste, and the bird cherry-eater always gave out a tongue black with juice.

Birch brunks

Yes, someone chewed birch brunks. They say they are delicious. Although the catkins of other plants could also be eaten.

As a child, I somehow incited younger children to cook compote from poplar earrings. They brought pots, salt, sugar from the house (all according to my recipe), we made a fire right in the yard. Everyone was happy, and no one was poisoned.

Lyudmila Rossenko PR-consultant

Kislitsa

Round sour leaves, as the name implies, taste sour. You may know it as bunny cabbage or cuckoo clover. In large quantities, the plant is poisonous. Spicy-aromatic and spicy-flavoring plants: A Handbook, but in general it is quite edible and even useful.

Acacia

Yellow flowers of acacia, or "dogs", can also be eaten. They were also called porridge, however, no one knew why.

If the acacia flowers were still preserved after the raids of the children, they were transformed into pods with also quite edible contents.

Resin

Yes, there was gum on sale in the 90s, but that didn't keep kids from chewing on the gum. They say the most delicious is cherry.

My childhood was spent in the Crimea. There was something to profit from there, even in early spring. The sweet acacia flowers went especially well, the resin of the trees was amber in color and soft-viscous to the touch. It seems that among the resins of different trees there were even favorites, but now I can't remember.

Alisa Pirogova PR-specialist

Tar

Wood resin as a chewing gum does not cause any questions: it is natural and environmentally friendly. But some have used tar for similar purposes. If the resin was picked off from the trees, then the tar was usually mined at construction sites. His taste was so-so, but there was a belief that he cleans his teeth.

Bluegrass

These are the same spikelets from which a “chicken or cockerel” was made, raking the whisk with your fingers. If you pull out a spikelet, you can chew the tip, it is white, juicy and sweetish.

Sour straws from the anthill

The algorithm for obtaining formic acid is simple: you need to anger insects, put a straw on an anthill, wait until they pour out their rage on a stick. There was also a spell to speed up the process: "Ant, ant, give us the juice as soon as possible." It remains to shake off the insects from the straw, and the product is ready to eat. But the most desperate licked the acid right from the ants.

You can catch an ant and lick its ass. You just need to take it correctly, otherwise it will bite on the tongue. Ants also do not fit all, only large red and black.

Pavel Lapin IT specialist

Black mulberry (mulberry)

This sweet and sour berry grows on trees. Its red-purple juice eats tightly into the hands and face.

Maple

The common ash-leaved maple was both a breadwinner and a drinker. You could have a snack on young shoots, which were peeled from the skin, like a banana, and on the membranes of young seeds. And in the spring, sap was extracted from trees, as well as from birch.

In the private sector, we generally ate everything that was not nailed down. White acacia, Jerusalem artichoke, "kalachiki". Or green shoots of maple, in a certain part of the stem they are quite tasty and crunchy. The main advice to the young "pedestrian" is not to read about edible chestnuts from French writers and not try to eat horse ones.

Ivanna Orlova copywriter

Poppy boxes

In ancient times, the poppy was just a flower that grew in every third front garden. The buds inevitably turned into boxes that looked beautiful and regularly supplied with small black seeds. They could be shaken out on the palm of your hand and eaten.

By the way, poppy seeds are the only thing that is not considered by the 1961 Uniform Convention on Narcotic Drugs, poppy straw, suitable for the manufacture of drugs, even if we are talking about the opium variety of the plant.

Rosehip berries

Cottony, slightly astringent and slightly sour taste. And there are also a lot of thorns inside. Rosehip berries, by the way, are a source of vitamin C Treatment with plants, Kovaleva N. G. …

Mallow

"Kalachiki", "bagels", "watermelons" - as soon as these little boxes were not called! It took a long time to collect them, but in childhood, time is not the most valuable.