Fried Dandelion Blossom - Good Eating from Your Lawn

 

Planting Potatoes and How to Get Rid of Warts

     Yesterday I pulled mile high weeds from the eastside of the garden. I have two sections. One section is for plants that like limey soil (Westside). The other is for plants that like acidic soil (Eastside). I don’t know what potatoes like but this was the only space I had left. On the other hand, they are right next to the Jerusalem artichokes which are also a root vegetable, so maybe they’ll be happy.
     I planted red potatoes that I got from Aldi’s - a grocery store. They had bags of 10 seed potatoes for $.79. Pretty good deal. Some years back I bought some of Aldi’s Ever-bearing Red Raspberry plants. They are doing great. They also like acidic soil. I mulch them with bags of wood pellets that have gotten moisture in them and can’t be used in the stove. Sawdust makes a soil acidic.
     It was hotter than blue blazes outside yesterday and with all the rain we’ve been getting the weeds are about four or five feet high. There is a lot of golden rod and ox eye daisies. I pulled and pulled and cleared an area out. Then dug and dug and got a patch about 7’ x 7’ cleared and put in 10 hills of potatoes. About 18” apart. Once they sprout, I’ll mulch them with straw to keep the spud itself from turning green.
In years past I had planted potatoes but always had a problem with Japanese Beetles eating the leaves. Curiously, I haven’t seen any Japanese Beetles in our yard for about three years now. I don’t know where they’ve gone or why they’re not around. I don’t know if this is a good thing or not. I haven’t seen many mud dauber wasps either. We used to have lots of them around.
     I figured it might be a good time to try growing potatoes again on account of the lack of Japanese Beetles. Also, we’re planning on having a rabbit hunt here come fall and small game season and I think freshly dug red potatoes would taste good with rabbit roasted on the grill!

     There is a folk cure for warts that I have used and find that for the most part it works. If you have a wart you must rub it with a potato that’s been cut in half under the light of the full moon, then bury the potato under a drip of a water spigot. If the potato sprouts, your wart will remain. If the potato doesn’t sprout, the wart will go away.
     Here’s my theory: On the bag of the seed potatoes as well as on the Internet under How To Grow Potatoes, it is suggested that only seed potatoes be planted. It says that regular grocery store potatoes may not grow on account of stuff that is put on them to keep the potato from sprouting. I figure it’s this stuff that kills warts. So if the potato doesn’t sprout, it’s been sprinkled with this stuff. If it does sprout, it hasn’t.  Only use a grocery store potato that hasn't sprouted on your warts.
     I don’t know what the full moon has to do with any of this, except that it sounds good.

Behold! The Extremely Tasty Dandelion Blossom!

     Once you have tried this recipe you will never again run off to the hardware store for a bag of Scott’s Dandelion killer. You will also realize how short the dandelion season actually is. It only lasts about three weeks with a short spell come September with its cool rains.
     When I lived up north, north of Pennsylvania in upstate New York, the Italian ladies would gather dandelion leaves, sauté them with olive oil and garlic, then marinate them in a blend of seasonings and vinegar. They’d pack them in a jar in the refrigerator and serve them as garnishes.
     I moved south(ward) to Pennsylvania and found that the people around here gather the same leaves, douse them with hot vinegar and bacon dressing, or throw them into a ham soup and eat them that way.
However, and I got this out of a Native American Cookbook I picked up at the Rez many years ago, the blossom itself can also be eaten. Who would think?
     I tried this recipe when my kids were very young and not into vegetables. At a point, as kids are growing up, they become suspicious of anything green or orange when it comes to eating. This suspicion is common among children. Supposedly, it helps them learn what is safe and what isn’t.  Until they see other people (like parents) eating orange and green things a great many times and not keeling over, they stay away from vegetables.
     However, the night I served dandelion blossom, breaded and fried - they gobbled them up! No questions asked. No suspicious glances in our direction wondering if we were going to fall off our chairs writhing in pain. They just ate them. And asked for more. Whoa! I thought. Are we evolved from cows? Rabbits? Dandelion greens and blossoms are loaded with vitamins and supposedly (and I did look this up many years ago) you can eat a LOT of blossom and not get sick. You can’t overload. We figure about a dozen to a serving. So here goes:

     Fried Dandelion Blossom

-Gather dandelion flower heads preferably away from the road.

-Set out two bowls - one with one egg and one tablespoon of water added, mixed in.

-Set out another bowl with anything for breading: flour with salt and pepper, Italian style bread crumbs and some flour, flour, bread crumbs - doesn’t matter. Whatever you have.

-Rinse the colander full of blossom in water. Not because they are necessarily dirty, but I found that the water helps them steam soft within the breading. Otherwise they have a fuzzy texture to the tongue which I don’t find pleasant.

-Dip the flattened out blossom in the egg.

-Flatten out the blossom and dip it into the breading mixture.

-Fry in oil, olive oil, butter and oil - whatever - till golden brown on the blossom side then flip and let it fry some on the stem side.

-That’s it!

     Sometimes I add chopped chives or spring onion, both of which come up around the same time as do the blossoms blossom.
     I have to admit, I get a kick out of Scott’s Lawn Care ads that show up on TV and in newspaper flyers and show a suburban homeowner so distressed over all those damn dandelions on the lawn. So Scott’s says “Use this and it will kill them all!” Right. For all I know they could be sprinkling the lawn with flour because dandelion blossoms only bloom for about three weeks in the spring when the weather is cool and rainy. Sprinkle your lawn with The Dandelion Killer and sure, they'll disappear - they’ll be gone in a couple of weeks anyway.  To everything there is a season.

     But I will tell you this for a brass fact, once you start frying up the blossom you’ll be sorry to see them go. They’re blooming now! Go get ’em!

PS - I'll lay a dime to dollar that a bunch of Scott's Lawn Care ads show up on this page and will tell you to contact them if you have a dandelion problem.  Go ahead - contact them - and give them this recipe.  Maybe next year they'll be telling us how to grow dandelions.

PPS - Because the dandelion season is so short it is possible to bread them and freeze them for later.  Just lay them out on a paper towel on a cookie sheet and set them in the freezer.  Once frozen, dump them into a freezer bag.  They taste just as good as fresh when fried and actually make for easy cooking this way.  I wonder when we'll see them at the grocery store done up like this. 

An Experiment in Growing Garlic

     Every year that I have planted tomatoes I’ve made spaghetti sauce and either canned or frozen it. Over the years, as I became a better gardener, more and more homegrown elements such as onions, chives, green peppers, oregano, basil, and parsley were added to the sauce. Last summer as I pealed, chopped, grinded and minced, I realized that the only element that was store bought (other than the olive oil) was the garlic! This year I am going to try to grow garlic.
     Ideally garlic should be planted in the fall or at least very early spring. I planted the garlic cloves last November.
     Find a nice sunny spot in your garden that is not too damp. Garlic likes dry weather and soil. To grow garlic dig up a strip of garden about a foot deep. Get some garlic from the grocery store and break it apart into cloves. Plant each clove about 1” to 2” deep under the surface, pointy side up. Set the cloves about 4” apart with rows about 18” apart. I think mine are a foot apart but it’s too late now to move them. Mulch with straw. Then let it go.
I mulched mine in the fall with straw from the chicken coop.  It had chicken droppings in it.   The garlic sprouts were about 4” high this February because of our mild winter. It got really cold some nights but that didn’t seem to hurt the sprouts.
     Now the weather is warming up so I have cleaned off the garlic bed and fertilized it with liquid manure. Garlic likes a slightly acidic soil so for the summer mulch I used wood pellets. We have a pellet stove and every now and then we open a bag and find that moisture has gotten into the pellets and they can’t be used in the stove. I use these pellets to mulch areas of the yard and garden that like acid soil.  For instance, the red raspberry bedd likes an acidic soil, so that is mulched with wood pellets.
     So there you have it! The garlic is now taking off. It’s about a foot high and fertilized and mulched. As it grows you're supposed to clip off the flower stem that may emerge.  This aids in adding strength to the root, the bulb, which is the part you eat.  I’ll see how it goes and keep you posted.

Seasonal Food from Eating with Bev: How to Seal a Maple Tree Tap Hole

Seasonal Food from Eating with Bev: How to Seal a Maple Tree Tap Hole:       The daytime temperature has climbed into the 70's and the nighttime temperatures are now hanging in the 50's. It's unseasonably warm ...

How to Seal a Maple Tree Tap Hole



     The daytime temperature has climbed into the 70's and the nighttime temperatures are now hanging in the 50's. It's unseasonably warm and this weather will stay with us for the next couple weeks - maybe longer! All of our maple trees have budded and they are no longer dripping sap. They are busy growing out their leaves now. It is important to seal the holes that were drilled into the trees otherwise bugs and disease can get into the tree and kill it. We can't let that happen.

     The best way to close up a tap hole in a maple tree is to find a maple twig that is about the same size as the hole drilled. You could run to the hardware store and get a bunch of dowel rods to cut up, but twigs are nature's dowels and they are conveniently located right near the tree's that you've tapped! Cut off a piece of twig about four inches long and pound it into the hole. Remember, the hole was drilled about 2" deep so about 2" of twig will poke out. If you find that the twig you cut is too thin (loose) use a piece from further up the twig branch. Nature provides us with tapered twigs, so soon enough you'll find a piece that fits snuggly. It can be somewhat forced into the tap hole by using a hammer. If it's too big, just find another piece or try turning it around.
     Because I use a nail in the tree on which to hang the jug, I also plug the nail hole with a small piece of twig. The tree will heal over and next year you'll find that the tap hole is sealed. You won't be able to remove the twig that was used to seal the hole. Nature is marvelous. Your trees will thank you for treating them well and with consideration. Next year, just find a different spot to drill.

     One way to tell if a tree is ready to be sealed is to look at the color of the sap in the jug. This is also one reason why I prefer to use plastic water jugs for home tapping. It's much easier to see #1 how much sap you got and also if it's clear or starting to turn dark amber in color. Once it turns dark amber there won't be as much sugar in the sap and it will not taste very good. It will taste woody or "buddy."

     The old meat grinder raised some eyebrows today when I took it out to Hilsher's General Store for advice. One, I needed to get a set of the right size stuffing tubes so to make sausages at some point and two, I wanted to get the blades sharpened or replaced.
     Dick Hilsher saw me wandering around the store carrying this heavier-than-lead meat grinder and asked if I needed help. He is usually there and is very helpful answering questions and finding you the right parts to get most projects underway.
     "Hm! Do you know what you have here?" Well, an old meat grinder. He asked me how long I'd had it and I said, "Couple days." Then he pointed to the patent date on it - 1909 - and told me all about the company in that used to make such meat grinders. Landers, Frary and Clark out of New Britain, Connecticut. It's a nice heavy duty Universal Meat Chopper. Cast iron. Still works but needed some attention.
     He brought me over to the display case of grinding blades and parts. "It's locked," he said. "The only thing around here that I do lock up." The blades were not cheap but not horribly expensive either. He had me feel a new blade and compare it to the feel of the blade on my meat grinder. There was a noticeable difference in sharpness. I would have bought a new set of blades - cutter which looks like a small propeller and grinding plate - a disk full of holes - but because my meat grinder is so old, the "square" hole of the new ones would not fit on the "rectangular" shaft of my old one.
     So we sent both blade and grinding plate off to the shop to be sharpened. He said when they get back they should be sharp enough to last me the rest of my life. (I'm not sure how much longer that will be, but it's good to know.)
    
     On Saturday Greg and I went up to Lewisburg, PA to the Dale Walker Engle House to see a demonstration on how to make sausage. They had a guy up there showing how to make maple syrup as well, but I pretty much know how to do that. The sausage demonstration was worthwhile. I got to ask lots of questions and as well learned how to do it.
     Questions: What's that gadget? That's the thing that keeps the auger centered when the blade is taken off and the sausage tubes added. Why do they say on the Internet to soak the casings in water? To make the stuffing go through more easily. Why do they say on the Internet to let the sausages rest for a day? To help set the filling. Should I use soy flour in the mix? Only for bologna. Where did those casings come from? A pig. What about for smaller link sausages, like breakfast sausage? A lamb. How about...? A steer. I didn't ask him if I could recycle gut fiddle strings for casings. That might have been out of his range of knowledge.
They added a mix of salt and pepper - about a 1 to 1 ratio and I'd guess about a 1/2 cup of each to about 10 pounds of meat. He said to only use good grade pork for pork sausage, a decent shoulder.
    
     While at Hilsher's I picked up a pound or so of spring onion sets and a package of Snow Pea seeds. It's that time of year. Yesterday I realized that the little green plants in the cold frame I'd set up in the fall are not lettuce plants, but weeds. I'll be replanting lettuce seeds today and try to get some chicken manure from the coop onto the garden. Tomorrow I'll be planting onions.
     They always say around here to get your peas planted by St. Patrick's Day which is this Saturday. Twenty years ago I used to try to do that but March would be so cold and snowy as well as the first half of April that the seeds would just rot. So we'd replant. Then May would get so warm that that the plants would be over before they started. Never any success with planting peas by St. Pat's Day. However, because of the mild weather we've been having I'm going to try it again this year - one more time - and see what happens.
     The grinding blades should be back in about two weeks. Just in time for Easter. Just in time for fresh kielbasa - I hope.