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["Donna &/or Kieran" <holycow@cookeville.com>]

    I have picked and cooked pokeweed in early spring some years, it's rather nice in some ways, but I don't like the bitter alkaloid taste that always is there and lingers sometimes on the tongue.  My mother isn't too fond of poke, nor was her mother, but now HER mother was crazy about pokeweed.  From what I know of food cravings and food hatreds, if it tastes good to you it probably agrees with your system, but if it tastes bad to you it's probably bad for you. 

    There are several approaches to picking poke.  You can pick the very young shoots, leaves and all.  Or you can pick the stems when they first shoot up, to as high as 3-4 ft on very large plants.  This is the same effect you get with very large asparagus plants, huge shoots that come up in a matter of 2-3 days sometimes.  Sunlight increases the toxicity and the red color on the stems.  In cloudy weather you can pick poke longer, in big patches of weeds where it has been shaded you can pick it longer.  The lack of red color on the stems tells you so.  At this size, people strip off all the leaves and the reddish skin on the stems.  I know about this because we lived somewhere where apparently there was a factory that bought poke and canned it.  Large stems could add up to heavy weights much faster than little shoots, and could be picked longer into the season. 

    Then you boil the stuff and pour off the water.  There's not much calories in it, and though I could think of it as a luxury when there's nothing else green to eat, the fact is that now the poke is coming up well, we have peas, broccoli, Bok Choi, lambs quarters, and will soon have cabbage.  The lambs quarters, nettles, and chickweed season are already past.  So there's no particular reason to be craving poke unless you just happen to like it.     Donna