Dandelions

Dandelions
Little Bits of Sunshine

 

        So many people hate on dandelions. Why? They're gorgeous little drops of sunshine that spring up so unexpectedly and suddenly it's as though they're little children playing peek-a-boo with you. The first dandelion of the spring never fails to make me smile. Their vivid yellow color is startlingly bright against the luminescently green nascent grass of early spring, and it catches your eye at once with its glow. They are perfectly designed for picking and sticking in your hair, for fiddling with, for making into mother's day bouquets, for simply admiring them, and for so many other things. 

        Did you know that dandelions are technically classified as vegetables? I think they must've taken the open spot when we found out that tomatoes were fruits (remember when everybody was making such a big fuss over that realization?). But every part of the dandelion plant is edible: the flowers, the leaves, the stem, the roots. I was so amazed when I learned this, and I was excited to try it out--and I did.  Of course, I personally find the stem too bitter to be of any real use, but I love the leaves and the flower. The leaves are pleasantly tangy, and admittedly bitter, but in what I find to be a good way. As greens go, I far prefer dandelion greens to any lettuce, and even to spinach, though I would take spinach over lettuce. I've never been fond of lettuce. But dandelions have such a flavor--it's quite unique and delicious, I would say. And the flower--first off, there's something spectacularly wonderful about being able to pick a flower from the ground and eat it. I like to start by licking my dandelions. I know. It sounds really weird. But you should have figured out by now that I'm really weird. And I like to taste the pollen, to feel the delicate grittiness on my tongue. It's like... powdered sugar, but not quite as sweet. The outer bits of the flower are not extremely flavorful, but they're light, and one can't help but imagine that it's like eating sunshine. The best part of eating the flower, though, is that if you can manage to catch it just right, the center is extremely sweet. This isn't always true, I've found. I think if you catch them too early, or if you don't get the center quite right, or if you get some of the green stuff underneath it, or whatever the reason, and you don't catch it just right, it's not notably sweet, and in some cases is even bitter. But when you get that perfect bite of dandelion-center and somehow hit the flower's sugar reserves, it's deliciously sweet. I've even read recipes for making dandelion jelly, and I'd love to try that this year. I love eating random things I pick from our lawn. A disclaimer, though: don't eat dandelions from public lawns or lawns where you don't know what they've been spraying. We don't spray our lawn with anything or put any chemicals on it, so it's safe to eat our dandelions, but you do have to be careful. That's why my mom says not to eat the dandelions at school. In Virginia in our yard, I used to eat wild chives, but those don't seem to grow here in Iowa. But they were so pleasantly spicey and garlicy, and you'd find patches of them strewn all through the lawn and I'd just pick them and chew away. There is some satisfaction in eating the same stuff as your bunnies.  

        Dandelions just bring such happiness, if you let them. The other day, when the dandelions were first starting to show, I saw a small patch of dandelions and smiled and thought, "I'll eat one or two of these, but I'll have to save them until more come up" but then I walked around behind the house and I just laughed out loud with joy and surprise because there was this huge patch of buttery-golden flowers and I thought "guess I don't need to worry about saving those". Give dandelions a chance, world. They're the farthest thing from weeds, if you only let them impart their joy upon your lawn and upon your palate (plus their health benefits--they have lots of iron, as it so happens).

       Here beyond the violet mist, violets, of course, hold a special place among spring flowers, but so do dandelions.