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Dandelion for Spring Tonic
It's time to watch for new dandelion greens popping up! They are at their best right now, before the flowers come. The next best opportunity for dandelion greens won't happen until just after the first frost. The cold takes the bitterness out of the greens although they won't be as tender as the first shoots of spring.
When foraging for the first dandelions of the year, look in places away from pollutants. For obvious reasons, you'll want to avoid roadsides and places where dogs go. Where the soil is rich and moist, you can find dandelions with the largest roots and biggest leaves. Pull the youngest and most tender ones for salad. If you've never tasted dandelions, they taste something like endive but more bitter. Mixed in a salad, dandelions improve the flavor of the other veggies or greens. They can also be sauteed in olive oil with onions and garlic for about 20 minutes. Cook them with sweet veggies such as carrots if you don't like their bitterness. For a milder flavor, boil them, drain, and boil again in fresh water. Dandelion flowers can be eaten. Right around Beltaine is a good time to harvest the flowers, while they're still fresh in the fields. The flowers can be mixed into a salad, sauteed or steamed with other vegetables, or even battered and fried as fritters for a side dish or snack. Be careful to use only the flower heads and remove the very bitter green part at the base of the bloom. Dandelion root is one of the safest and most popular herbal remedies. Especially in the spring, drinking a cup of dandelion tea every day with your supper will help cleanse the body of accumulated winter buildups of fats, sweets, and the effects of a sedentary season spent indoors. A decoction is useful as an overall tonic, especially benefitting the liver and gallbladder. It eases the symptoms of chronic hepatitis. Do not take dandelion if you have irritable bowel or stomach, or any sort of acute inflammation. Dandelions are good for bladder, spleen, pancreas, stomach, and intestines. The milky sap of the plant removes warts, moles, pimples, calluses, sores and soothes beestings and blisters. Click on the dandelions to go back to Airmid's Well Herbs in Tara.  |
Courtyard
~ Table of Contents ~
Feverfew
Lavender Ladybugs Thyme Bay Laurel Mint Answers to Spring Equinox Quix Fiddleheads Nettles for Spring Daffodil Quiz Beltaine '08 Treasure Hunt: THE SACRED OAK Beltaine '08 Treasure Hunt: VERVAIN Beltaine Treasure Hunt '08: MARIGOLDS AND MAIDENS Beltaine Treasure Hunt '08: THE CHARM OF IVY Beltaine '08 Treasure Hunt: GREEN WHEAT EARS Beltaine '08 Treasure Hunt: FLAX BLOSSOMS Beltaine Treasure Hunt '08 - GARLIC Beltaine '08 Treasure Hunt: EGLANTINE Beltaine '08 Treasure Hunt: Mystic Mistletoe Beltaine '08 Treasure Hunt: Magical Fern Seeds Beltaine '08 Treasure Hunt: Hawthorn Beltaine '08 Treasure Hunt: BOX SPRIGS Beltaine '08 Treasure Hunt: APPLE |
