Fat Hen (Chenopodium Album) is also called lambs quarters or white goosefoot is in plentiful supply around here, particularly in summer and while not being (in my opinion anyway) as palatable in a salad as mallow, fat hen is a valuable addition to your food supply. The herb is rich in vitamin A and C as well as the amino acids cystine and lysine and was widely used in Europe since prehistoric times and in North America as a potherb. 
Fat hen is an upright shrubby plant and around here will get to almost 2 metres high when cultivated in our veggie garden and produces quite large amounts of leaves as well as greenish flowering spikes containing large numbers of seeds. The seeds are very nutritious as are the seeds of many edible plants and are high in protein, vitamin A, calcium, phosphorus, and potassium. Once you have fat hen in your garden and you let it set seed you will always have it. The leaves and seed heads can also be stripped off and fed to the chooks who will enjoy it.
When putting the chooks onto a veggie patch that has fat hen on it, we cut down the large plants first and put them through the shredder, which has been directed towards the veggie patch the fat hen came from. The shredder breaks down the tough stalks and spits out the leaves generating a layer of mulch that the chooks love to dig through.
If fat hen is included in cooked dishes by being steamed or stir fried as a vegetable it is still quite palatable. It can be braised by itself as a vegetable, included in soups and the large leaves can be used to make rolls in the manner of vine leaves. The leaves can also be used to make a stuffing like material for use with roast or baked chook or other poultry.
Fat hen can provide a healthy and tasty meal for free with no food miles if you can gather it locally. As when gathering any wild herbs, consult the section on general rules for gathering of wild herbs first and follow them to reduce the likelihood of causing problems.
