We had a ton of dandelions popping up around the yard the other day, so I decided I should make use of this free and nutritious food source. Besides making dandelion fritters, I had no other experience with using the flowers for food (though I am very familiar with using the greens and roots). So, I googled some recipes and found a nice one for Golden Blossom Jelly.
The recipe called for one quart of blossoms, tightly packed(this is important). I thought for sure I had enough in the yard, but I was wrong. An entire yard's worth of dandelions only came out to 2 cups! In order to make my jelly, I had to find more blossoms and fast. Dandelions may grow everywhere, but it's very hard to find ones that are safe enough to eat. You just can't pick the dandelions from your neighbor's yard. Dandelions growing close to a road will be filled with arsenic and lead, back from the days of leaded car exhaust. MOST dandelions in a yard or park will have high concentrations of pesticides and chemical fertilizers. The key is to find an open grassy area that is interspersed with weeds (so you know it hasn't been chemically treated in a few years) and that is far away from the road. The problem is those areas are somebody's private property, and they don't want you stealing their weeds! Unless you live far out in the country, you have to look hard.
I jumped in my car, and drove north of my house. I thought I hit the jackpot when I came across a long since abandoned house along one of the Ashland bike routes. The far back yard was filled with hundreds of dandelions, with blossoms the size of half dollars. It was pretty obvious that the yard hadn't been sprayed (at least not for many years), and there was no one along this empty road to protest my presence. So, I started picking. Just when I was almost done, a P.T. Cruiser with a very old man pulled up. He had a long wispy white beard, and a soft, kind of choked voice (emphysema?). He let me know that I was on his property and that I needed to leave, IMMEDIATELY. I held up my glass measuring cup of dandelion blossoms to show him I wasn't up to no-good. He laughed when I did that, but not in a funny way. So, I got in my car asap and left. Lucky for me, I had just enough blossoms to finish my jelly.
I won't go into the whole process of making the jelly, but I will tell you it requires snipping off the golden petals(the part you want) from the green sepals(bitter and gross). It's very time consuming, messy, and a little annoying. Other than that, the jelly making went smoothly. To can my jelly, I used jelly jars given to us by Braden's folks, and a few empty jars from my dad's homemade honey(from the hives on the farm). At Christmas, I'll give our folks their jars back filled with Golden Blossom Jelly. If I happen upon the old man again, I'll give him a couple jars, too.
