I attended a seminar last Wednesday on edible weeds,
and the speaker passed out a few recipes,
dandelion jelly among them.
She gave a quick review of how to make it
and enthusiastically told us that it tasted like honey.
We spent a wonderful weekend
at my parents' cottage in Wisconsin,
and there were
a lot of dandelions.
So - the perfect opportunity to try making dandelion jelly.
Pick flowers; remove petals.
This is going to take a while.
Boil with water.
Strain.
Hmm. Not looking too appetizing.
Mix infusion with lemon juice, sugar, pectin; boil.
Add lots more sugar; boil one minute.
Fill sterilized jelly jars; seal.
Tastes like honey? Nah. Tastes like lemony sweet jelly.
But I'm glad I did it. My curiosity is satisfied.
And I did enjoy the lecture.
I learned that garlic mustard is edible,
so we had garlic mustard leaves in our salad Saturday night.
Mmm-mmm!
What a beautiful color. I once had dandelion wine. It was magic.
ReplyDeleteThe dandelions are huge this year. How funny we both wrote about them (and garlic mustard too). I heard a radio interview a few weeks back (on Wisconsin Public Radio) with a man who writes books on foraging for food. It made me realize how much we're missing out there.
ReplyDeleteGlad you had a nice time in Wisconsin!
Gosh , I didn't even know that dandelions were jammable !
ReplyDeleteI passed a particularly lush clump of nettles yesterday but , since they were growing at the base of a tree on a popular walk for dogs and their owners , I left them where they were . Pity , but all those recipes for young nettle tips will have to wait till I venture out of town .
I had to jump over from Ellen's "Growing Gills" since there aren't too many Ginnie's with the same spelling and I wanted to say "Hi".
ReplyDeleteMy daughter is the type that puts flower petals in salads so she'd be up for making Dandelion Jelly. It looks like an awful lot of work to me !! Thanks for doing it for me.