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Don't Fight the Dandelions, Eat Them

© Traute Klein, biogardener

Dandelion salads are delicious if you pick the sweetest part of the plant, the flower, full of nectar. First article in the series on dandelions. This is the first article in a series of three on the benefits which we can derive from dandelions. The second one will tell you how to drink them, and the third one how to use them as medicine. Both articles are linked below along with other articles on plants with health benefits.

Dandelion Salad

Would you like to know what I had for lunch today? A dandelion salad. No, not made of tender dandelion leaves, even though I have been told to eat them all my life. No, dandelion leaves are not really to my liking. I have, however, found a part of the plant which I really appreciate and which is much easier to pick, the flower. It has the advantage of being sweet with nectar, especially if I get to it before the bees do. A pint of dandelion flowers mixed with a little pot of yogurt is so filling that it takes me half a day to finish it. Tomorrow, I may pick another pint of dandelion flowers and make another salad. That will be my health tonic for the day as well as a nourishing meal.

Are you a chocoholic?

If you are a chocoholic, I have bad news and good news for you. There is a connection between chocolate, coffee, and black tea and breast lumps. You can read about it in the article about benign breast lumps linked below. That's the bad news. If you are male, I don't know what effect chocolate may have on you. If you know, please tell me. Now some good news. That article tells you that you can reverse the effects of the chocolate in a few weeks by abstaining from it. I have even more good news. The bitter taste of dandelions or of bitter herbs will curb the craving for chocolate, removing the temptation to indulge in the delicacy. After munching on dandelion flowers regularly, as I do every spring and summer, I can walk past the counter with all my favorite dark German chocolate without even taking a second look.

Ridding the Lawn of Dandelions

The first year after moving into our house, I worked all summer digging up the dandelion roots from the boulevard. (In Canada, the strip of lawn between the sidewalk and the street pavement is called boulevard.) What wasted effort! For every dandelion plant which I removed, the wind blew over a zillion seeds from the neighboring boulevards.

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