In his chapter on dandelions, the late Euell Gibbons, famous forager and author of Stalking the Wild Asparagus, waxes nostalgic about a better day when the dandelion was appreciated as the valuable source of food, medicine, (and yes, fortune-telling) that it is.
“Did you ever see a child who did not enjoy blowing the fuzz-winged seeds from the hoary seed balls of the dandelion?” Euell asks, after stating his case about the dandelion’s many tonic uses. And yet, “Every garden-supply house offers for sale a veritable arsenal of diggers, devices, and deadly poisons all designed to help exterminate this useful and essentially beautiful little plant which has so immensely benefitted the human race.”
Reading Stalking the Wild Asparagus as a teenager, I had always wanted to but never tried any of the dandelion’s useful parts–the flowers, young greens, and supposedly the roots. So the other day Gregg and I picked 1/2 a small Ziploc bag full of newly-opening flowers, dipped them in wheat flour batter, and deep-fried them.
