Until last June, I never knew that dandelions were edible.  Did you?  Not only are they edible, they’re an incredible source of nutrition.  Read here if you want more details of how wonderful they are for you: http://www.leaflady.org/health_benefits_of_dandelions.htm

Different parts of the dandelion are good for eating at different times.  The best time to eat the leaves is before they flower, when they start to get bitter.  You can deal with the bitterness by boiling them, rinsing them, and then boiling them again, which is what I did last year.  But it’s better to just pick them when they are young and tasty.

This morning I sent the kids out to pick dandelion flowers.  I have a neighbor who has tons of them in her yard, so they got quite a few. It didn’t look like so many at first, since they are so small and compact, but it was a lot.  I have several experiments I want to try with them, only one of which we made today.  One is dandelion flower fritters – that was part of today’s lunch – another is dandelion bread and dandelion quiche.  For the bread, you need to separate the petals, so dd8 and ds10 spent quite a while doing the petals. 

I’d like to tell you how amazingly delicious the fritters were, but they honestly weren’t such a big hit.  It’s not a hard thing to make – you basically dip the flower in the batter, drop it in hot oil, and quickly fry it.  I think the lack of success had more to do with the fact that the batter for the fritters was too heavy than anything else (if we make it again we’ll use less flour), and the heaviness of the batter also meant that they took much longer to cook than they should have and it was labor and time intensive.  I left dd14 to make them while I went with dd12 to the thrift store to do some emergency clothing shopping.  (Do you remember me mentioning a child I have who rips pants within the first time or two wearing them?  Well, he has a unique gift and I can’t figure out how it’s possible for a child to so quickly destroy clothing, but he does this with all of his clothing – socks have holes within a couple of wearings, he came home from a friend last Shabbos with a borrowed shirt because as he walked by a door it got caught and literally ripped every button off his new shirt, and now he has worn holes through the bottom of his shoes – not one other child of mine has ever accomplished this, and since the first I knew of it was when he showed me how he could poke his toes through, I needed to buy replacements right away.  🙂 Anyway.)  If I had been here I might have realized in time that the batter was too thick and avoided the problem, but in any event, I wasn’t and I didn’t.  I think the fritters could be very tasty and maybe we’ll try again.  I love the idea of being able to forage for high quality nutritious food right outside of our doors. 

Tonight I told a friend I could send over my two oldest daughters to help her tomorrow with the cooking for Shabbos meals for all of her visiting family (she’s making a bar mitzva this weekend), so I won’t have them around much to help here for Shabbos.  I was thinking of making the dandelion bread for Shabbos breakfast, but now I’ll see if I’ll have the time.  The basic idea for that is to use the flower petals the way you would add banana or zucchini to a quick loaf recipe.  For the quiche, I think it would work nicely to use the petals and or the greens, sauteed with garlic, and add it to a typical quiche filling. 

One of my kids asked if we could dehydrate the flowers and them blend them into a flour.  I thought that was a good idea, and maybe we’ll try that.  It would make it very easy to cook with, adding a sprinkle of some here and there.  Dandelions are such a good source of vitamins, free and easily available, that it seems worth a little time to play around with how to best use them. 

Avivah