After reading Ava Chin's Urban Forager column in the New York Times the other day I was inspired to make Dandelion Jelly.
This has been in the back of my mind for a while but I always seem to have some other use for the hard-won yellow petals: bread or muffins or wine. And it's not like one just has flowers to burn (despite what my neighbors think about my "lawn"). Harvesting the petals is definitely not in the same league as plucking a few leaves for a salad or buds for an omelet. It's a commitment. Luckily I went a little overboard during my wine-making foray, collecting a cool eight cups of petals rather than the six cups the recipe called for—giving me exactly the two cups needed for Ms. Chin's recipe.
Always the pranksters, the dandelions weren't done with me yet. My unruly petals refused to submit placidly to the domestic arts. On the first go-round the jelly didn't want to set, resulting in a syrup instead. The next day I poured all the syrup back into the pot and added 4 more teaspoons of pectin. This did the trick, though I lost a significant quantity cooking down the syrup and even then I wasn't convinced it would set. But after returning from Olympia that night (which is like a trip in the Wayback Machine to the Seattle of 20 years ago, pre-tech boom, pre-Starbucks, pre-WTO but definitely not pre-grungewear or pre-dive bar...I liked it) I discovered that my measly 3/4 of a pint had set most gracefully.
The flavor is really quite wonderful. It's kind of like a gelified honey. (Did I make up that word? Apparently not.) After enjoying—no, gobbling down—my first taste of gelified honey aka dandelion jelly on an organic wheat English muffin, I felt like one of those drunken bumblebees you see in the dandelion fields. There was nothing to do but flop down and take a mid-morning nap.
Here's the recipe, with the caveat that your mileage may vary. Don't forget: pectin is your friend when it comes to Dandelion Jelly.
2 cups dandelion petals
2 cups water
1 cup sugar
2 tsp lemon juice
2-4 tsp pectin*
* Maybe more, maybe less. This jelly operates on principles beyond our ken.
1. Bring 2 cups water to boil and add dandelions. Boil 10 minutes over medium heat.
2. Strain dandelions and return liquid to pot.
3. Add sugar, lemon, and pectin, then bring to boil again before reducing heat to a simmer. Stir with wooden spoon until syrupy. This may take little time or lots of time, depending.
4. Pour into sterilized jars, seal, and process in hot water bath for 10 minutes.
Yields about a pint.
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Ray Bradbury famously waxed nostalgic about his family's love of dandelion wine. The story first appeared in Gourmet magazine and conjured a mostly lost bucolic America where everyone owned a wine press and the hated weed of today was thought of in much gentler terms. Bottled sunshine he called the tonic they made in the cellar. Even though dandelions are predominantly harvested in spring, the writing evokes thoughts of endless summer days, backyard baseball games, and kids with fishing poles riding bikes down to the local pond—the sort of stuff our current crop of post-structuralists might call a simulacra.
Sometimes I think I caught the tail end of that America in my own childhood, when there were still woodlots to roam near my family's home and fireflies lit up the nighttime sky. Now most of us live in planned communities or the city. It's paved. It's crowded. But there are still plenty of dandelions.
The other day I went looking for six cups worth of the jaunty yellow petals in order to make wine. I started in my own tiny backyard, picking every one in sight. Then the front yard and down the block. Soon I was in front of the local elementary school, where last year I struck a bonanza of dandies, but a groundskeeper had already beat me to it with his John Deere. I continued on toward busy Rainier Avenue, once the gathering arterial for Italian immigrants in Seattle. They called the Rainier Valley "Garlic Gulch" back then. Now, after several successions, it's largely Southeast Asian.
I walked through the community garden and found some beautiful bloomers. A middle-aged Laotian woman tilling her plot wanted to know what I was up to. I explained the culinary and medicinal benefits of Taraxacum officinale, how it's much more nutritious than virtually anything we can grow ourselves, and she pointed me toward a burned-out husk of a house down the block. She told me an involved story about the fire and how her people wanted to help the owner rebuild but instead he was sitting on his hands. "He lazy but he good man," she said. "I tell him you pick there." This seemed like a legitimate enough invitation to me.
Indeed it was a dandy heaven. When not molested by the mower, dandelions grow tall and robust, angling their Cheshire Cat grins toward the solar life-force. I picked the front and then slipped around back, which is where Dandelion Nirvana truly opened up before me. There was an abandoned car and a loud autobody shop on the other side of the fence. A black cat prowled a hedgerow. This yard hadn't been attended to in years! It was a sea of warm, inviting yellow.
I must have lost myself in the picking, because when I looked up I saw an old man sitting on the back stoop pulling a Budweiser out of a paper bag. It was 11 in the morning, and I decided this was a fairly valid maneuver on such an unseasonably hot April day. I picked my way over to him. 
He offered me the other can of beer in the bag, which I accepted.
"You police?"
No, I assured him, I was not. He was Laotian, too. His name was In Keow and he was 69 years old. Though the language barrier between us was tough, we persevered. His grandfather had once owned this home, he said. Next door lived a Vietnamese man. He said he was retired, that he had worked very hard, and that he would still work—but only for cash, no check. He was adamant about this last point. We sipped our beers in the hot morning sun.
In Keow was amused by my stoop labor in the dandelion patch. He had social security arriving once a month and some other unspecified payouts. Making wine—and spending hours plucking little dandelion petals to do it—was definitely not on his agenda. "I go to store,"he said proudly. "I buy beer." As for me, I wasn't about to argue with that logic. Springtime in America has never quite been what they say it used to be.
To make a simple Dandelion Wine, I followed the instructions of Pattie Vargas and Rich Gulling in Making Wild Wines & Meads. Combine 6 cups dandelion petals, 1 lb raisins, 2 lbs sugar, 1 tbsp acid blend, and 1 gallon boiling water into sanitized bucket. A day later mix a starter culture of 1 1/2 cups orange juice, 1 tsp yeast nutrient, and 1 package wine yeast in a jar, shake it up, and let it sit until bubbly, one to three hours. Pour starter culture into the vat along with 1 tsp pectic enzyme and loosely cover. Rack after three days into air-locked container, then rack again three months later and bottle. Wait another six months—until the depths of gloomy winter—to enjoy a taste of bottled sunshine.
In case you haven't noticed, dandelions have bigger brains than people. Seriously. And they get smarter each time you whack them. Mow a lawn of dandelions repeatedly and what happens? The dandelions learn to flower ever closer to the ground until those yellow Cheshire cat faces are grinning at you from beneath the grass. They know exactly how far down the cutting blade can reach, and that's where they proliferate once again.
The other day, after harvesting a few batches of dandelion petals for Dandy Bread, I actually mowed my lawn, surprising myself even more than my neighbors. It's been a week and the yard is already replenished with dandelions. No biggie. I picked a bunch of blooms for tempura.
Got a problem with tempura? I didn't think so. Here at FOTL we may periodically throw a tizzy about health and nutrition and generally staving off rot, but you won't hear a lot of griping about FAT. It's the stuff for which our ancestors put their lives on the line. Need some fat to survive the winter? Roger that, let's tool up and take down one of them #$*%&@ woolly mammoths again. Tucking into a bag of pork rinds doesn't carry quite the same cachet.
Yeah but making you own tempura and making it well is almost as cool as hurling a prehistoric projectile at an oversized elephant having a bad hair day. And while I've tried a bunch of tempura recipes over the years with wildly varying results, this time I think I figured out the secret. Whatever you do, make it more watery than you deem appropriate. I used a recipe found here, then tweaked it.
3/4 cup flour
1/4 cup corn starch
1/2 cup ice-cold water, plus extra
1 tbsp rice wine
1 egg
In a bowl mix the flour and corn starch. In a second larger bowl, beat an egg until frothy, then add the ice water and beat some more. Stir in the rice wine. Now add the dry ingredients and mix quickly, not worrying about the lumps. Don't over-mix! If the batter oozes off a spoon, it's too thick. Add more ice water until the batter is watery. It'll seem way too watery if you're used to making, say, Beer-Batter Fish and Chips, but trust me.
Now proceed over to the stove with your bowl o' batter and a plate of dandy flowerheads. Your vegetable oil should be good and hot by now. Flick in a drop of water to see if it pops and sizzles. Using your hands, dip a dandy in the seemingly too thin gruel. The batter will run off the dandy in sheets but the flower will still be thinly coated and looking rather sad and soggy. Gently drop the dandy into the oil, petals facing down, and PRESTO! The flower opens up as if the sun has just come out. (This miracle of kitchen chemistry won't happen if the batter is too thick and heavy.) It's really quite amazing to see the dandy regain its form, albeit with a beautifully thin veneer of crispy tempura as its new skin.
Dandy Tempura has an unusual mouth feel. If the batter is right, the outer crust should be crispy, yet being a flower, the overall texture is squishy. I mix the dandies in with other more traditional fare: sweet potato, bell pepper, onion, and zucchini, to name a few.
Now go pick a mess of ridiculously nutritious dandelions and start frying. That'll teach those PhD weeds!
Picking dandelions early Saturday morning in your front yard is the sort of civic activity that gets you noticed. Joggers huff and puff down the sidewalk and momentarily crane sweaty necks to see what you're up to. Neighbors walking dogs stop to talk in a disguised attempt to figure out what the hell you're doing now, all the while wondering, Is he finally getting ready to mow his freakin' junkshow of a lawn? Baby-strollers hurry past—that's where those crazy people live...
Actually, in all honesty my neighbor Mike, a scientist getting ready to head off to the Arctic for three weeks to continue studying our doom, wandered over with Daisy (the poodle) to see what my daughter was shrieking about. (She'd found a slug.) Mike even plucked a dandy for me and gave it an expert twist to release the golden petals. He's fairly forgiving of our lack of lawnmowing. Looking at our neighbor's lawn and then ours, he said, "I always figured that was the fairway and this was the rough." Rough is right. When I suggested there was something disturbing about the mania for weeding one of the most nutritious plants on the planet, he warily agreed (he's a climate scientist after all!). People are crazy.
Then I paused for a while to watch a spotted towhee singing in the top of our hawthhorn tree. He's a randy towhee for sure, and I hope he sticks around to raise a brood.
Anyway, the correct way to harvest dandelion petals is to pick them in the morning while they're still closed and twist the petals away from the rest of the green flower head. A robust crop of flowers can give you a couple cups' worth of petals in no time. Just watch out for any unwanted hitchhikers.
It's peak dandelion petal time in Seattle. This is the time of year I make Dandy Bread, a favorite of the kids. After reading Molly (Orangette) Wizenberg's wonderful new book, A Homemade Life, I took her advice and bought a simple oven thermometer that hangs from the rack. Loe and behold: Our oven was off by a cool 25 degrees! But I don't think this is why my recipe posted last year (based on a Peter Gail recipe) seems to be a little too moist, so I've edited the original to a "scant 1 1/2 cups milk." In other words, not quite a cup and a half. Otherwise it's still easy and delicious, and a great way to make use of those nutrient-packed dandelion heads blooming all over town like an army of self-satisfied Cheshire cats.
Over the weekend Marty and I took a stroll down to Lake Washington through our neighborhood park. Dandelions were everywhere, big clumps of them, most without buds—in other words, salad greens prime for the picking. If your palate is sensitive to bitter tastes, it's essential to find dandelions that haven't budded. We brought home a tote bag's worth. 
I'm not a big fan of warm salads. The other night we had dinner at a new restaurant in Seattle, and though my main was good, I thought the salad of warm spring greens (foisted on me by my dinner companions) was sacrilege. I want my tender young lettuces upright and crisp, not soggy and slumped over.
But there is one warm salad I'll walk miles for. We've been making a version of it with spinach for many years now, thanks to a recipe shanghaied from our friend Kathy. Our stash of dandelions seemed like an obvious fit on this occasion.
Kathy's Wilted Salad
6 cups dandelion greens (or spinach)
2 cups basil leaves
3-4 oz prosciutto, diced
1/2 cup pine nuts
3-4 cloves garlic, minced
3/4 cup parmesan cheese, grated
1/4 cup olive oil
salt and pepper, to taste
Mix the greens in a large salad bowl. Heat olive oil in skillet over medium heat. Add pinenuts and garlic, stirring occasionally. When pinenuts start to brown, add prosciutto and cook one more minute. Pour contents of skillet over salad greens and toss with parm. Season if necessary.
In like a lion and out like a lamb? Not likely. Look, I know Mother Nature is pissed about all the insults we've heaped on her, but snow in Seattle on April 1 is not my idea of a funny ha-ha April Fool's joke. Mostly it's been icy rain today, but for a few minutes everything slowed down like a phonograph on half-speed and the flakes started accumulating on my shoulders—while I was gathering dandelion leaves no less!
I guess this means we'll have a long season for early spring greens. Phil the groundhog must be in exile.
In any event, I got enough of the green stuff to offset the audacity of the white stuff. The dandelions poking through the pavers of my back terrace are just right for the plucking: big rosettes of leaves without buds (yet).
I braised a handful of the dandelion greens in white wine (1/4 cup) and chicken stock (1/2 cup) with some chopped garlic for 15 minutes or so. Meanwhile in a pot I combined a cup of cooked cannellini beans with half a diced tomato and its juice plus a half cup of chicken stock, then seasoned with a healthy sprig each of fresh thyme and oregano, along with salt and pepper; this I simmered for 15 minutes as well. The beans got ladled onto a warm plate and then topped with the greens; a pan-fried piece of halibut (not caught by me, alas) lorded it over the veggies, drizzled with a quick beurre blanc of butter, lemon, and wine made with the pan drippings.
Not a bad lunch on a miserable day. The tang of the lemon married perfectly with the slightly bitter greens (think braised kale if you haven't eaten dandelions before), while the flaky fish and creamy cannellini beans worked together with their textural counterpoints. This is an easy meal I'll be eating again. By the way, the amounts above make enough for two; figure 1/3 lb of halibut fillet per person.
On a related note, while buying my fish at Mutual, I noticed they had monkfish for sale. I asked the manager about the provenance of the fish (since Seafood Watch says it's one to avoid because of harmful bottom-trawling techniques), and he was able to confirm that it was hook-and-line caught. This is good news for lovers of the "poorman's lobster," such as myself and We Are Never Full. I think it's important that all of us who love food (and the planet, by extension) should continue to ask these questions of our fishmongers and restaurateurs. We're all in this together. Good on Mutual for doing the right thing.
It's game time. My boy is scheduled to take the mound today. I deliver the pep talk and then hand him a shot of nourishment. A sports drink? An energy bar? Nah. I hand him a hot Dandy Burger.
Yes, I've gone off the deep end. Just when you thought I was done with $&@%# dandelions...
What can I say? I had a fresh crop on the lawn.
This recipe comes from a member of the Forage Ahead Yahoo group. I adapted it slightly, adding more flour and onion plus an egg.
1 cup packed dandelion petals (no greens)
1 cup flour
1 egg
1/4 cup milk
1/2 cup chopped onions
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp each basil and oregano
1/8 tsp pepper
Mix all ingredients together. The batter will be wet and goopy. Form into patties and pan fry in oil or butter, turning until crisp on both sides. Makes 4-5 very nutritious veggie burgers.
The Mariners bullpen could use a few of these.
Here's an archived link to the show >>
Today at 2:08 p.m. FOTL will be on KUOW 94.9 FM Seattle, talking with "Sound Focus" host Megan Sukys about a delicious and healthy plant you can harvest right out of your own backyard: dandelions. This is a radio debut, so no promises from this not-ready-for-prime-time player... but it should open your eyes (or ears, rather) to alternative ways of dealing with a so-called weed. You can listen online.
We've been chatting up dandelions quite a bit around here in recent weeks. You can read about the health benefits of dandelions here and my quest to find other "superfoods" here, or check out the following recipes:
* Dandelicious Omelet
* Dandy Bread and Muffins
* Dandelion Delivery Cookies
* Fried Dandies
Now is a dandy time to get out there—to abandoned lots, unmown fields, farm margins, even your own backyard or parking strip—and harvest a weed that we spend zillions trying to eradicate and yet is more nutritious than any domestic vegetable.
FYI for new visitors, other topics covered by FOTL since its January '08 inception include:
* truffle hunting
* oyster po 'boys
* morel mania
* putting the porcini in Cream of Chanterelle Soup
* harvesting stinging nettles
* digging razor clams
* marinating frozen salmon
(Image by auer1816.)
Before making this recipe, you'll need to harvest a cup of dandelion petals. This shouldn't take more than 15 minutes with the right flowers and technique. Choose tall, robust dandelions that have been allowed to grow unmolested. Abandoned lots and field margins are good places to look. Generally the presence of dandelions indicates herbicides are not in use, but roadside specimens can contain the residue of other chemicals. Choose your spots wisely. You'll want to harvest in the morning, before the flowers have fully opened. Grasp the yellow part of the flower (the petals) and twist away from the green sepals and stem. Discard any greenery. I prefer the bread to the muffins.
2 cups unbleached flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup dandelion petals
1/4 cup canola oil
4 tbsp honey
1 egg
scant 1 1/2 cups milk
Combine dry ingredients in large bowl, including petals, and mix. Make sure to separate clumps of petals. In separate bowl mix together milk, honey, oil, and beat in egg. Add liquid ingredients to dry and stir. Batter should be fairly wet and lumpy. Pour into buttered bread tin or muffin tin. Bake at 400 degrees. A dozen muffins will take 20-25 minutes. Bread will take 25-30 or more minutes. At 25 minutes, check doneness of bread with a toothpick. If still too moist inside, lower oven temperature and continue to bake, checking every five minutes.
This recipe is based on one in Peter Gail's The Dandelion Celebration; mine doubles the amount of dandelion petals. My first attempt—the muffins—used the recommended 1/2 cup of petals. You can see the color contrast in the two images above, with the bread and its full cup of petals better showing off the dandy essence. I might even add more petals next time. The final product is savory sweet, somewhat like cornbread, with the yellow petals an eye-catching glint of sunlight.
Take a great cookie recipe, add dandelion petals—and voila, you've got a dandy delivery vehicle. On the over-under I usually go with old standby chocolate chip, but this oatmeal cookie recipe from a woman who goes by Crescent Dragonwagon (good name, huh) is really a thing of transcendental beauty. Piling in a bunch dandelion petals detracts nothing and adds the salubrious goodness of the hated weed. But be warned: it ain't Easy-Bake OvenTM material.
This is a whopper of a recipe, requiring a coupla giant bowls and mucho measuring; I always halve it.
1 1/2 cups white sugar
1 1/2 packed cups dark brown sugar
1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) butter, softened
3 large eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
4 1/2 cups rolled oats
3 cups unbleached flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
3/4 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups chopped walnuts (or pecans)
1 1/2 cups raisins (optional)
2 cups dandelion petals
1. Cream sugars and butter in large bowl. Beat in egg, one at a time. (If halving recipe, one egg is enough.) When blended, stir in vanilla.
2. Combine oats, flour, baking soda, cinnamon, baking powder, and salt in a second large bowl. Mix in dandelion petals, carefully separating clumps. Stir in nuts (and optional raisins).
3. Stir dry ingredients into wet. If you're doing the full recipe, your wet bowl better be big.
4. Grease baking sheet. Scoop gobs of desired size onto sheet. You can make uncommonly huge cookies with this recipe. Bake at 375 degrees for 8-10 minutes (or less for conventionally sized cookies) until light brown. Cookies are best if slightly chewy.
Early morning commute, sun just rising over tops of buildings to the east. Cars whiz by on Dearborn; I-5 booms overhead. Our hero scrambles up a grassy hill from street level and steps through a hole in the chain-link fence. The undeveloped lot is bounded by apartment buildings on one side and the highway on the other. Trash is strewn about: a dirty mattress, beer cans, someone's torn underwear. He starts picking dandelions. These are big ones, unhindered by mowing or herbicides. He takes half-opened blossoms and pinches them at the base, twisting until the petals come free. The petals go into a plastic sack tied around a belt loop on his pants. Our hero sees two men approaching from the street. Uh-oh.
First Man (eyes red, wearing a trenchcoat and hightops): What you up to?
Urban Forager: Um...picking dandelions.
Second Man (ratty black down jacket, carrying a duffel bag): Dandy lions?
Urban Forager: That's right. To eat.
First Man: Eat? That's crazy talk.
Second Man: Sheeee.
First Man (burps and stumbles a little bit): Dandy lions, huh.
Urban Forager: They're really good for you.
Second Man (shakes head sadly): Sheeeeee.
Urban Forager: Seriously.
First Man: Them yeller petals?
Urban Forager: Sure. I'll bake something with them. Bread. Muffins. Maybe cookies.
First Man: Dandy lion cookies?
Urban Forager: Right. I could also make a dandy wine.
Both Men: Whoa!
First Man: Dandy lion wine, huh.
Urban Forager: That's right.
Second Man (smiling toothless grin): Sheeeeeeee.
The two men pause to consider the possibilities, look at the dandelions all around them in a new light, then lurch off into the 'bo jungle.
Whew...FOTL is catching his breath after doing his first radio interview ever, with Megan Sukys of NPR affiliate KUOW Seattle 94.9 FM. You can tune into the "Sound Focus" segment this Friday afternoon at 2 p.m. The topic: foraging dandelions in your own backyard.
Let me just say hats off to Megan for helping this microphone-shy forager through the process. I have a new respect for the hard work broadcasters do every day as a matter of course. Megan was always ready with a question when I ran out of steam to keep the ball rolling, and her enthusiasm was boundless.
Needless to say, I don't know how the finished interview will shape up, but I can tell you we picked some dandelion buds in the yard and made an omelet in the kitchen. Megan also got to sample my Dandy Bread and Dandy Cookies, and I sent her off with a stash of each for her family and colleagues.
Don't forget to tune in this Friday. I'll post a link after it airs.
Here's a thought experiment: Your buddies blindfold you and take you to the local, where you have your usual draft. Someone orders up a plate of Fried Dandies. Hmm...that sounds good, if unfamiliar and maybe a little twee. You munch one down and grab another. Then another. The taste is hard to place. The Fried Dandies are light and crunchy on the outside and a little bit squishy on the inside, but not like seafood. They're fresh and bright. They're addictive. You remove the blindfold. Fried dandelion blossoms? Are you kidding? 'Fraid not, son. Now have another. It's good for you!
Fried Dandies*
36-48 large** dandelion blossoms
1 cup flour
1 cup ice water
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg
Remove as much of the dandelion stem and greenery as possible without damaging the blossom itself. Heat oil in a skillet on medium high. Mix flour and salt in a bowl. Add ice water and stir. Blend in egg. Use tongs to submerge dandelion blossoms in batter and drop in hot oil. Fry in shifts. Serve with beer.
* adapted from Peter Gail's Dandelion Celebration.
** The biggest and best dandelions can be found in abandoned lots and field margins—places that see neither mowing nor herbicides. When allowed to grow freely, dandelions can reach impressive size, with blossoms a few inches across.
I've been talking up superfoods all month. For most of us in temperate regions, our bodies are transitioning from the rigors of winter into the working season (even if we're working indoors at desks now). Wild greens—many known as "weeds" by the establishment such as stinging nettles and dandelions—aid that transition. They're high in vitamins and minerals; they have lots of fiber and protein. Folks of yore knew all about them. They made teas and tonics of the superfoods and ate them like vegetables.
Besides the obvious health benefits, there are more modern reasons to harvest wild superfoods. Take a look at my lawn from the street and it looks okay. Not great, but not overrun by so-called weeds. Look a little closer and you'll see plenty of robust green weed clusters competing with the frail grass, dandelions especially. Only these dandelions don't have the hydra-like yellow manes to give them away and irritate the neighbors. Where did all the flowers go?
Into my belly, is where. Just a few minutes of snip-snip-snipping out in the front yard and I had enough for an omelet (i.e. a half cup of buds for a small 2-egg omelet). I targeted all the buds that were partially open, with flower stalks exposed halfway down the buds. You can use closed buds as well, but I figured I'd get the first round of ready-to-bloom dandies and then harvest another batch in a few days. Clip off the stem, saute in butter a few minutes (until they fully open) and pour in the eggs. As easy as that.
The taste of a fried dandelion bud is hard to explain. It's certainly not your usual domesticated fare—it's savory with a touch of bite, though not bitter, and earthy like wild mushrooms. In an omelet, it's dandelicious. Said Marty: "What's that flavor? It's like a burst of spring, almost citrusy. Like nibbling on a little bit of sunshine."
Just one more reason to let your lawn do its own thing.
It's high time for dandelions in Seattle right now and presumably elsewhere. Northern regions of the interior still locked in snow will have to wait another month. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm not a big fan of the prissy American lawn, that one-note symphony of righteousness that seems to suggest moral rectitude on the part of the homeowner willing to commit himself to a never-ending battle with weeds. This position becomes even more indefensible when one stops to consider the nutritional and culinary value of the enemy.
So, for the neighbors' benefit, I've been doing my part to rid the lawn of weeds. By eating them.
In a quest for superfoods to kick and roll out of winter, FOTL has been enjoying dandy salads for the past month, and sharing the bounty with other...shall we say more skeptical eaters. But in the last week we've had a massive dandelion blossoming across the city, meaning it's now time to change tactics. The leaves of dandelions are delicious while still young and tender. Raw, they have a bite not unlike socially acceptable salad greens such as escarole or chicory. They can also be steamed as a side vegetable, or cooked with a chunk of saltpork like collards.
Once the buds form, though, the leaves start to become bitter. This is when I turn to my trusty copy of The Dandelion Celebration by Dr. Peter Gail, director of the Goosefoot Acres Center for Wild Vegetable Research and Education. Dr. Gail includes recipes for the whole kit-and-caboodle: In addition to 40 pages devoted to just the leafy greens we also get 30-plus that make use of closed buds, opened buds, full flowers, and those amazing (dastardly to lawncare professionals) taproots.
A few examples of recipes using the buds and flowers: Dandelion Flower Muffins, Dandelion Fritters, numerous variations on Dandelion Wine, and the Dandy Omelet. Using roots: Dandelion Coffee and even Dandelion Root Ice Cream (a recipe originally submitted by our own local Herbfarm Restaurant).
In the past I've stuck with the tried and true raw greens. This year we're going deep into the catalog. Expect future reports on the buds (apparently they pop open when fried) and maybe even the roots, although FOTL isn't quite prepared to give up his dark roast morning java, even if it's decaf.
Is there anything more pedestrian in suburban America than the carefully manicured front lawn? As a place to play catch and kick a soccer ball, I'll let you have your backyard turf. But that front lawn of tidy green grass running from door to sidewalk? That monochromatic parcel of mindless geometry? It needs to go.
My neighbors are forever grappling with the weeds that so easily out-wit them. They pull and mow and dump gallons of fertilizers and herbicides, never mind the ever-dwindling salmon that drink in the polluted run-off. Meanwhile we've let our own lawn go to hell, earning the hairy eyeball as property values around us take the hit. One day I'll rip out the lawn altogether and replace its humdrum bed of grass with a more visually stimulating rock garden of some sort, with native plants that don't require constant coddling. In the interim I'll make use of the lawn's best feature.
The dandelions.
For millennia the dandelion was revered for its medicinal qualities. Consumptives ate its roots in winter and its tender leaves in spring and were restored to health. Now we have vitamin supplements and the once mighty dandelion has been consigned to a long list of pests to be stamped out.
It's too bad, because people are missing the boat. The vitamin game is no way to stay healthy. Study after study shows that vitamins absorbed through food are far more salubrious than any supplement. I've already posted about two "superfoods"—the stinging nettle and watercress. Now add the lowly dandelion to the list. Turns out it's bursting with vitamins and trace minerals, in part because of those exasperating taproots that can reach two feet or more down into the soil. According to Dr. Peter Gail, president of Defenders of Dandelions, these common weeds "contain more beta-carotene than carrots, more potassium than bananas, more lecithin than soybeans, more iron than spinach, and loads of Vitamins A, C, E, thiamin and riboflavin, calcium, phosphorus and magnesium."
I guess one of these afternoons when the sun is out I'll resuscitate our ancient lawn mower and make my neighbors happy. But first I've got some dandelions to harvest.
