Wildcrafting - short tweets on dandelions, mowing, and being weird
All parts of the dandelion, Taraxacum officinale, are edible. Dandelions were brought here intentionally, valued for their nutrition, medicine, and beauty. How did they get demonized?
Try leaves in your salad, cooked with kale, as a pot green, I have made a Greek "Spinach" Pie (Spanakopita) entirely with dandelions, not spinach. The leaves contain more beta carotene than carrots, as well as other valuable minerals including calcium.
The roots can be pickled, used in stir fries, or roasted as a beverage. To pickle, simply cover the roots in vinegar, use glass and a plastic lid. About 6 weeks later you can use the vinegar with its added minerals, and still eat the roots. I have a young friend who asks for pickled dandelion roots whenever he visits - so I taught him to make his own. A great project for an 8 year old boy!
To roast the roots for a beverage, spread the washed roots on a cookie sheet, place in a slow (about 200-250 degree) oven for 3-4 hours until they are fully dried and fragrant. Store in a glass jar with a good seal, grind as you would coffee, and brew similarly. While the diuretic quality is preserved, the other medicinal value is not. The roots are also tasty in stir fries. The roots contain lots of inulin which is helpful for balancing blood sugar levels and new research indicates it may also help with the absorption of calcium.
The flowers are also edible. They are beautiful in salads, to decorate cakes, over veggies and rice, anyplace you'd like some color. Either use the whole flower, or for a more delicate taste tear the thin petals away form the base and sprinkle them into food. Of course dandelion wine is a special treat, and easily made. It retains some of dandelion's liver nourishing benefits, as well as aiding digestion.
Some dandelions are bitter, some not. It depends on variety, time of year, part harvested and stage of growth - before during or after blooming. For the most delicate sweet taste try them in the early spring and late fall. Bitter is an acquired taste, usually more appreciated in other cultures.
Dandelion has been used as a digestive aid, for nourishing support for the liver, and as a mild diuretic. One of its antique common names is "wet-a-bed".
It is truly puzzling that this wonderful herb, which helps protect us against pesticides and toxins, is itself the target of a chemical onslaught that isn't good for us, or our pets. Ann Arbor has become more and more dandelion friendly over the last few decades. If your neighbors complain or look askance at your dandelions, know that you have history and reason on your side. This is an important plant to keep close at hand!
At the Homegrown Festival, Sept. 12, at the Farmer's Market, I'll have a table and will be handing out free postcards extolling the virtues of dandelion. Please stop by and pick up a few! If you can't make it, but want to print your own, I have a PDF you can download and print (yellow card stock is suggested).
In a related tweet: Mowing the lawn is a little painful. I recently mowed around St. John’s Wort, over beautiful plantain, and wanted to rescue dandelion and yellow dock. I have the urge to harvest everything before I mow. Impossible. It will grow back, there will be more. My Ann Arbor place has no lawn remaining, but my cabin nearby has a large lawn that is best mown. At least I got rid of the gas mower and now do it all with an electric one, but it is still painful. I can only do so much harvesting!
Lawns are a strange artifact. Some people take them so very seriously. And they aren't really that healthy for the environment if they consume chemicals, fertilizers, and fuels for gas mowers. People have free choice, if a lawn is that important I won't try and make you change, but I'm glad that we have made it OK to have natural lawns, gardens, and especially dandelions! The more lawns we can convert to productive planting, food, habitat, water retention, and more, the better. Whatever steps you're willing to take - good for you!
***** If you think I'm weird, strange, and fringy, I have nothing on this guy. Fergus The Forager is in England, and currently is working on a year of eating only foraged and wild food. He is a great writer, and blogs with lots of photos and explanations. Enjoy! I recently also found him on youtube, an hour show (6 ten minute segments) on wild food and roadkill, seaweed and education. Check it out.
I'm glad to be a vegetarian, so that the moral and practical aspects of eating roadkill are not part of my thought process. I just don't know. But it is a lifestyle option! I may some day commit to eating some wild food every day, but I don't feel at all drawn to the more extreme limitation of only eating wild food.
And no matter what, it takes a community to make a wild food diet work. Barter, work parties, sharing, and celebrating together. It isn't something easily done on your own. Dont' believe me? Read the Clan of the Cavebear books. Pages and pages outlining all the hard work. And Ayla didn't have the internet as a distraction...
I'm happy to have all my options, although I've removed some. Fast food, processed food, meat, fowl, fish, and nutritionally empty calories. I enjoy eating and enjoying what I eat is important. That feeds me.
***** I’m still finding mulberries to eat on my walks. A wonderfully long season. Each dog walk, we stop at a nearby tree and enjoy. Nala eats from the ground, I pull branches to my reach and munch for a few minutes or longer. Just in the last few days, it has been harder to find a few black and juicy berries. It may finally be over.
Linda Diane Feldt is a local Holistic Health Practitioner, Teacher, and Writer, A student of the healing arts since 1973, she has had a private practice "providing an integrated approach to holistic health care" since 1980.
Photos by Linda Diane Feldt, Dandelion Greens. Sorry I couldn't find any in flower - but don't we all know that flower pretty well by now? If you don't ask a kid.