Just a Dandy Lion

"Whether the weather be fine
Or whether the weather be not,
Whether the weather be cold
Or whether the weather be hot,
We'll weather the weather
Whatever the weather,
Whether we like it or not." –Anon

Spring on the Palouse is an unsettling series of steps and missteps, mixed in with a lot of winter, which, we pray, will eventually lead us to summer. The arrival and readiness of our wild spring greens is less a calendarial matter and more an event determined by weather, erratic and labile. The key to getting your spring greens is to wander outside, keep your eyes open, and pay attention to the earth beneath your feet.

Because you will not want to eat dandelion greens too late in the spring, I'll tell you about them first: Dandelions are the iconic, quintessential hippy edible green; the emblem, the family crest, of the VW bus, bell-bottomed set.

Identification review:
"do-you-like-butter?" yellow flowers, one tops each stem, during the warmer half of the year.

Break the stem and in-edibly vile white milk flows: a rumored wart remedy, applied topically.

Leaves, lobed like a variety of ocean waves: sharp teeth, deep curves, no curves. Hairless under-leaf, except for the spine, which is (depending on which source you turn to) either hairy or hairless.

You may have tried dandelion greens before and tasted something like you'd imagined poison: satanic bitterness. Whereas, they Are considered a bitter green, the key to getting your dandelion greens is to get them early and to use a flavorful salad dressing. The greens of dandelions are offensively bitter once the plant flowers. When you get used to the ferocious taste of Dandy-Lion greens, you'll know exactly when their bite is too harsh.

Dandelions should not be hard to find, despite civilization's best efforts at eradication. You will not need to go on safari in your hunt for these lions, just check in alleys, gardens, and yards. In early spring their yellow, lions-mane flowers are not yet out, so look for a circular spread of leaves in the grass. As always, identify your prey with certainty. Not all green growing things are edible.

Collect them by the handful from relatively clean places. If they look funky or diseased, don't pick them. One lawn expert recently told me that Round-Up was so safe, he could drink the stuff, and I thought maybe he should. Lesson: herbicides are an entrenched institution so keep an eye out, okay? At any rate, wash your healthy looking collection. Dry in a salad spinner. In the alternative, wrap in a dish-towel, go outside, swing your arm in a circle like a cartoon winding up for a pitch: the human salad spinner. Not only is it showy, it's also works! Sort out the yellow leaves and the grass.

Dandelion greens are perfect in a salad, mixed with other wild greens, spinach, or grocery greens and a honey mustard dressing. They are a good spinach substitute in pasta sauce, pasta noodles, green curry, lasagna, soups, etc., etc. They can be wildly bitter, especially in recipes calling for greens by the pound, so mix them with milder greens. You can store them in your fridge for a few days. Don't bother drying them.

Dandelion greens are considered very high in Vitamin A, Vitamin C, potassium and calcium. They are high in iron, B-vitamins, thiamine, niacin, and liver-lover choline. The leaves are also a filling 19-32% protein(Healing Wise by Susun S. Weed).

Susun Weed quotes William E. Dodge from 1870 noting that the Digger and Apache "scour the country for many days' journey in search of sufficient to appease their appetites. So great is their love for the plant (dandelion leaves), that the quantity consumed by a single individual exceeds belief."

I can't say I'm as madly in love with dandelion greens as the Digger and Apache supposedly were, but I do regard them with high esteem and reverence, devouring exhilarating quantities each spring. I'll be in my Birkenstocks, going no further than my neighborhood-nuisance lawn, gathering bowl-fulls of bracingly healthy dandelion greens, and thanking the earth for her persistent, under-appreciated Dandy-Lions.