You’re broke and bemoaning the fact that money doesn’t grow on your lawn. Well, dear Autostraddlers, lucky for you, your food does! And even if you don’t have your own lawn, your food grows in other peoples’ lawns, in yards, and in parks! Don’t worry, I’m not calling you a cow. I’m just suggesting you eat dandelions.
You may be broke as fuck, but who needs money when you can look at pretty flowers and then pick them to serve your needs — and I mean all your needs. Need to get drunk? The dandelion is here for you. Need to chill out with some anti-cancer tea? Look no further than the dandelion. And finally, who doesn’t want pretty flowers in their salad? Yeah, that’s right, dandelion flower salad is a thing — it is a nice complement to the toast from your toaster oven and should be the staple food at all your AS brunches and lesbian potlucks!
Dandelion Wine
via tppermaculture.blogspot.ca
Dandelion Wine is a classy drink. Sure, you can use it to fulfill your drunken-debauchery quota; but when I imagine people drinking dandelion wine, they are in a garden wearing pretty hats and perchance speaking with British accents.
Here is what you’ll need:
The flowers from enough dandelion flowers to fill a big-ass gallon-sized bucket.
3lb of sugar
2 lemons
2 oranges
½ oz of yeast
Here’s what you do:
Start by pouring a gallon of boiling water over the flowers. Leave it for three days (yes, this recipe requires patience) and stir the mixture every day (yes, this recipe requires persistence). Finally, after three days, strain into a deep pan or pot and add lemons and oranges. Bring the mixture to a boil for about five minutes. Then cool. Add yeast and let ferment for three more days. Cork, leave for two months, bottle. Then invite a bunch of classy ladies over, wear fancy hats, discuss kittens in fake British accents. Unless you have a real British accent.
Dandelion Tea
via weheartit.com
Dandelion tea is really good for you. In addition to being anti-cancer, it’s a diuretic, helps cleanse your liver and your gallbladder. Researchers are spending 157 thousand dollars to figure out what makes it so special; but you don’t need to spend anything to make this tea.
Here’s what you need:
Dandelion roots
Here’s what you do:
Pull the roots out of the ground. You may have to dig a bit for them. You can use your hands, if you’re hardcore like that, or a small shovel. Once you have gathered a cupful of roots, wash them and use a coffee grinder to make dandelion root powder. Steep your powder in hot water and you have tea! You can drink it just like that or add nutmeg, clover, sugar, anything really for taste.
Flower Salad
via iscreamicecreams.tumblr.com
Easy-peasy.
Here’s what you do:
You get some dandelions, you chop off their flowery heads, you put said heads in a salad. What kind of salad? Any salad! That’s the wonderful thing about dandelions. They go with everything. Greek salad. Caesar Salad. Salad that you hastily throw together with the veggies in your fridge before they go bad.
Enjoy eating flowers. Just remember to ensure the dandelions you’re using haven’t been sprayed with pesticides. This is about eating flowers, not poison. Remember how magic happens when girls and flowers are together.
First of all, another awesome post by you! Maybe it’s because you’re a fellow Canadian, but I feel very connected to your through our hatred of Harper, our love of Rick Mercer and now…dandelions. Every spring I dig up piles of dandelion roots so my wife can make us tea!
We roast them in the oven, 325 until they are dark (couple hours?), before grinding them though. It makes more like a coffee than a tea. I will definitely try to make that wine though, since I’m already making experimental beer and wine.
Not sure I’d eat the flowers though.
Again, super great article!
And could I say “though” one more time? Maybe.
Thank you! Let me know how your wine-making goes :)
Me like Coookie
ah dandelion wine! I couldn’t stop thinking about it and how to make such thing since reading ‘Just Kids’
“…sit and talk, smoke cigarettes, and pass around jars of dandelion wine …”
DON’T EAT dandelions from lawns that have been chemically treated!
upon further perusal, i see you’ve got it covered. never mind
Thanks Malaika! Now all I want to do with my day is make dandelion wine. :0)
I think that would be a good way to spend the day :)
I like wine, I like flowers and I like ‘Dandelion Wine’ by Gregory Alan Isakov, and so this is very Relevant to my Interests.
Yes. I have had dandelion tea that is like coffee, made out of roasted dandelion roots, and with chai spices too, and also with almond mild in a latte thing and it was awesome. I bought it from a food co-op in Melbourne though, I haven’t seen it since! Malaika, these things look like a lot of work!
I baked some dandelion bread early last fall, with the flower heads kneaded into the dough:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lunarcamelco/7158344982/
Sadly I didn’t taste them first and those particular flowers were super bitter. I’d try again if I found another decent source of pesticide-free flowers but I definitely recommend sampling them before using.
Don’t forget the Greek way. Dig ’em up, wash the leaves, boil them, add lemon and olive oil. YUM. Don’t forget to drink the water.
man i want someone else to make some dandelion wine so i can drink some asap
I want to make dandelion wine sooo bad, but I probably do not have 3 days worth of patience.
Yes! I’m so glad youve written this article! big internet air five! high time that “weeds” get a proper place at the table, tip o’ my garden hat. and im especially glad that youve included the “eat your lawn” phraseology. yesyes to home gardening and foraging for food in all bits of wilderness whether its a patch in your backyard or beyond. one note/Q is about the dandelion tea/coffee – maybe you should include a note about drying the roots? ive learned to roast them in the oven. later you can even use the grounds in an espresso machine, make yourself a “soy dandy” at home.
overall supa hell yes for a post on eating flowers, one of my favorite things to do.
if youre talking brunch, how about a flower frittata!
Bro what the fuck! Why is your fav thing eating flowers?? Thata nasty
Yo, why you hatin on this comment, flower be yum@21
I don’t really love dandelion greens for salads, I find them to be super bitter, but maybe if you cooked them somehow they could be tasty? In like a stirfry with some some like soy sauce/brown sugar glaze and some peppers to sweeten it up a little bit?
Also, I have heard that it is pretty important to use *brewing* yeast, which is not the same as bread yeast or nutritional yeast. That can be kind of hard, though I’ve known people who bought it at fancy beer shops or on the internet. Using bread yeast might turn out *okay* but I think using the right kind of yeast is probably ultimately important.
Also, nasturtiums! You can grow those in a flower-box and they are totally awesome in salads.
Here’s a place with info about yeast for brewing and wine!
http://www.whitelabs.com/wine/wine_descriptions_amateurs.html
cant contain myself on the eating flowers topic:
tatsoi flowers! broccoli flowers! mustard green flowers! squash/zucchini flowers (used to make some amazing apps @ thai restaurant by filling the flowers with cream cheese & spice mixture, twisting tips to seal, batter and fry. can be done at home by cutting a corner off a ziplock to make improv pastry bag), mint flowers, basil flowers, oregano, rosemary, dill, cilantro, all kinds of herbs, lavender (find someone w an ice cream maker and make some lavender & honey ice cream!), chamomile of course (but how about in soup, flavoring to rice, salads? yesyesyes), calendula, lemon balm, chives & garlic, fennel, ginger, the list goes on and on. sometimes we get really busy and plants in the garden “go to flower” right? so eating all parts is a good way to use, appreciate, and enjoy all the a plant has to offer. if the beast called time management is being unruly, just eat flowers and dont worry about ‘waste’
also, super easy flower infused oils: a boil bathed sterilized mason jar + almond or olive oil + flowers, let sit for few days-weeks, strain out flowers = use as massage oil, you (and she) will love it/you, you magically creative creature…
and easy herb infused liquor the same way, less infusion time and def remember to strain! lavender gin is calling your name
Finally some uses for those pesky things!
I always complain about them but now it’ll be a shame when I have to move back to university and there’s no more grassy bits to get food from.
dandelion wine was one of my favorite books when i was younger. i can’t wait to make this.
Dandilions have so much to offer! What a great weed, or plant, or whichever it is. I am a fan of any way to order weed.