Poor man's salad
At our apartment building, me and my friend Brooke have a garden plot. And since chemicals aren't allowed in the gardens, and the plots are separate from one another, the dandelions that grow wild there during the winter (yeah, winter in Portland is big on rain and not very big on ice or snow) are perfectly safe to eat. (Ah yes, dandelions, poor man's salad. But don't eat them if the soil they're in is chemically treated.) So dandelion leaves and sometimes roots in stews or the leaves in salads is something we do.
This year, the specific species/sub-species/mutation of dandelions growing there are a kind that grows DOZENS of leaves each, in this pattern where most of the leaves are fanned out along the ground like a green sun with myriad rays. I must have cut at least a couple dozen leaves off each one and didn't even get a third of the leaves growing on them! Salad and soups for days!
Also found out that not only are the leaves and roots edible, so are the flowers. I'm wondering if that includes the stems of the flowers, too? I wonder because when I was a kid, I had a habit of peeling apart dandelion flower stems and licking the bitter white fluid inside, and I never got sick from it. (Don't worry, we never lived anywhere with chemically treated lawns.)
There’s these other “weeds” called plantains that are edible too (as well as having medicinal properties), but I haven’t seen any of those in the garden plot yet this year.
Interestingly, you can buy seeds of a large plantain cultivar on Amazon: Here.
This was cross-posted from http://fayanora.dreamwidth.org/1336054.html
You can comment either here or there.
This year, the specific species/sub-species/mutation of dandelions growing there are a kind that grows DOZENS of leaves each, in this pattern where most of the leaves are fanned out along the ground like a green sun with myriad rays. I must have cut at least a couple dozen leaves off each one and didn't even get a third of the leaves growing on them! Salad and soups for days!
Also found out that not only are the leaves and roots edible, so are the flowers. I'm wondering if that includes the stems of the flowers, too? I wonder because when I was a kid, I had a habit of peeling apart dandelion flower stems and licking the bitter white fluid inside, and I never got sick from it. (Don't worry, we never lived anywhere with chemically treated lawns.)
There’s these other “weeds” called plantains that are edible too (as well as having medicinal properties), but I haven’t seen any of those in the garden plot yet this year.
Interestingly, you can buy seeds of a large plantain cultivar on Amazon: Here.
This was cross-posted from http://fayanora.dreamwidth.org/1336054.html
You can comment either here or there.