The Dandelion Diet

Now that spring has finally arrived, Dandelions have become a major component of our diet. We have two species of Dandelions, Taraxacum officinale, the Common species, and T. palustre, the earlier-blooming species of soggy areas of oldfields Officinale means "of the shoppes," and that's the species we collect from our lawns and eat, though T. palustre is doubtless just as edible.

You've probably heard that Dandelion root has medicinal benefits - anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer... so do the leaves. And the flowers, which folks have traditionally only made wine of, or tossed the petals onto a salad... have even greater health-promoting properties than either roots or leaves! As well as being richer in polyphenols, having anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.
I'm not going to copy all the information from this page, but let you read it yourself:
Is The Healthiest Part of Dandelion its Flower?

My search did not come up with a listing of the nutritional content of Dandelion flowers - just that 1/2 cup of uncooked flowers contains 25 calories. They are easier to harvest than the roots, and milder in flavour than the leaves, and during their short season, we should all eat them as often as we can!

The other day Fred left half of his breakfast for me to finish (he's always chopping whatever wild greens are in season into his green soup mug and microwaving them up with whatever will enhance its texture and flavour) and I tasted it... and then finished it! Here, in his own words, is how he makes  Dandelion Breakfast:

"...my method is to pick a bowlful of heads, and add an egg, some oil, a source of saltiness (in this case sauerkraut), some Tumeric-based spice, and a crush them into a mug, then put slices of cheese on top, and microwave for longer than you'd think appropriate."



This meal is totally "keto", and is full of good fibre. I prefer to add the cheese in the last minute of cooking, but Fred likes it chewy!

Here's my microwave version, to serve two. Along with two eggs, I've added chopped kolbassa and  grated cheese - I push a small drinking glass into the centre, for more even micro-wave cooking. I didn't remember to photograph it again before we ate it!








My specialty is Dandelion Flower Fritters - I've made them every spring for decades. Each year I use a little less flour, and they still turn out fine, even though now they're much more flower than flour!  Just mix a small amount of your favourite pancake batter, fold in the dandelion flowers, and fry! Maple syrup and a dollop of sour cream or yogurt are great as toppings.

Back in the day, some were judgemental about lawns with lots of Dandelion blooms, but with the banning of recreational herbicides this became the normal condition - though you can still occasionally see gentlemen on their hands and knees in Kingston manually digging out dandelions from a small lawn.


But to us, a gold-spangled lawn looks insufficiently harvested, suggesting a household menu deficient in flowerheads - but even a fully taraxacophagic diet wouldn't empty an extensive lawn - a whole new set of flowers appear, each day of the short blooming season. 

Dandelions mostly don't reproduce sexually, but produce seeds asexually by apomixis, without pollination, resulting in offspring that are genetically identical to the parent plant. This means that clones which have adaptive characteristics can take over uniform habitats, such as lawns and roadsides. Since they don't require pollination, selection among clones may favour those with reduced nectar and pollen production, explaining their relative unattractiveness to pollinators https://www.gardenmyths.com/dandelions-important-bees/

Autumn Dandelions!  26 September, 2019

After this summer's drought, through which only a very few, limp Dandelion leaves could be found,  autumn rains have brought out veritable fountains of large, lush, mild-flavoured leaves, which we are using in all he ways we used the spring leaves. 

Today's brunch was "toasted cheese sandwiches" request and instructions by Fred... chop a large handful of leaves finely (we have a clever, many-bladed pair of herb-cutting scissors for this) and mix with shredded cheddar cheese. Pile on one half of a flat bun, and toast in a buttered frying pan. He suggested that I might shake some Turmeric into the cheese & leaves mixture, but in this case, my frying pan was getting hot... well, next time.