Dandelion Coffee

Last fall I had pretended to clean up the dandelions from the lawn, but I saved the roots and looked up the instructions for making dandelion coffee. Those roots, roasted and ground, sat in my pantry for most of the winter before I decided to try them. They smelled good and actually a little like coffee, so I made a cup - and what can I say? I'm a believer now!

No kidding, it's a good drink with a little sweetener added. Free is frugal, right? And it's healthy, too.

So Saturday I started out to turn the soil in the two raised beds we made last year, but I got side tracked.

Halfway out to the garden area, under a sand cherry bush, was a large dandelion plant that I'd watched last year, just getting a good start on this year's growth. I had harvested some leaves and buds from it, but otherwise let it grow. (I know, but I LIKE weeds.)

Anyway, the ground was nice and loose from snowmelt over the last few weeks and just ripe for digging, so I dug up the dandelion and cleaned off the large taproot. I found another one nearby and dug it up, too, then I spent the time to clean, slice and roast them.

Then, of course, I had to have a cup of dandelion coffee. It was well worth the effort but I never did make it to the garden.

If you want to try it, make sure you have your other work done first. :)

[Warning: All parts of dandelions are diuretic. Don't drink this if you're already taking a diuretic for any reason, or if you have other health problems that would be affected by a diuretic.]

Be sure to not get it from an area that's been chemically treated in any way. My back yard is off limits to any chemicals, as I grow several "weeds" there.

Look for a healthy plant, dig around it at least a shovel's depth, then lift it out of the ground. You'll break the taproot getting it out; that's fine. It will grow back from what's left. Cut the crown from the taproot and replace it in the soil if you want to encourage even more dandelion plants to grow. Take the root and wash it well, trim off the hair roots and any very small side roots, then scrub well with a vegetable brush or a piece of plastic net.

When you're satisfied that it's clean, cut it into more or less uniform pieces and place it on a baking sheet. Heat the oven to 250 degrees and let it roast over the next few hours. Check it now and then, and if some pieces are brittle, remove them; they're done.

When they're all brittle, cool and store in an airtight container.

To make dandelion coffee, grind the roots in a coffee grinder or break them up with a mortar and pestle - not too finely because they don't settle as well as coffee grounds and you may have to strain the liquid.

Make the coffee like you would camping coffee: Add the ground root to cold water and boil it for a few minutes. It takes about a teaspoon per cup, more or less depending on your taste.

Side note: Frugally, I intended to use the crown for a vegetable, but it was so small and tight, that when I saw a pill bug in the water, I decide it wasn't worth it to look through it that closely.

The annual dandelion coffee dig

It took awhile for me to get hooked on dandelion coffee. First, I read about it and thought about it for awhile, then one day I dug up a dandelion root and tried to roast it. It was just one root and it was too early in the year, so it barely made enough for one cup. It didn't taste too bad, but seemed like a lot of trouble, so when I came across Traditional Medicinal's Dandelion Tea (same thing), I bought a box of it. By the time I'd finished that box, I was hooked.

Determined not to spend money on something I can do myself, I dug a few more, then read up some more. Finally realizing that fall was the best time to dig them (d'uh... it's the best time to dig most roots because they've been storing food all summer), I dug a whole pan full of dandelion roots, washed, scrubbed, trimmed and roasted them.

Still... it seemed like a lot of work. Until I realized that I didn't have to scrape off all the hair roots and I didn't have to clean them under running water and that a vegetable scrub brush worked great to get the dirt off.

Three changes of water, but a lot faster than the first few times, I now have a pan of dandelion roots roasting in the oven. I will dig more tomorrow or the next day, until the little area I let "go to the weeds" is cleared of dandelions - for this year, anyway.

If you want to dig dandelion roots and try it, wet the soil thoroughly before you begin and give it an hour or so to soak in. The first reason is to make digging easier, but secondly, to keep the roots from breaking off so short. Dandelions grow a very, very long taproot and that's what you're after, but you won't get it all, not when it can grow several feet into the ground. That's what makes dandelions so hard to kill permanently.

Don't tell anyone, but I'm glad of that. If it could have been poisoned or dug out of this area, it would have been long before I got here. I let it grow for three years before trying to use it, to minimize the possibility of poisons.

I use a stove top percolator to make my dandelion coffee in, and since I only drink one cup or two at the most, each day, I have been thinking of making a full pot and freezing it in one cup portions. It seems to make more sense, but I'll have to see.

If you haven't tried it, think of it this way. It's free; it stores well, and it's good... that is, if you like it. Try it. Maybe you can cut the cost of coffee by having dandelion coffee part of the time. Oh - no caffeine and it has lots of minerals. It's good for your liver, gall bladder and will help overcome jaundice. It's a gentle diuretic, but won't deplete your body of potassium, like pharmaceutical diuretics do.

Best of all, it's an enjoyable drink with a deep, robust flavor that fairly sings of autumn!

The TIme of Year for Digging Dandelions

It's time to dig dandelion roots again! I wrote about it here: Dandelion Coffee fourteen years ago! Since then, it's become
The Annual Dandelion Coffee Dig. 

With the price of dandelion root coffee or tea, whatever you want to call it, I figure I've saved quite a bit. It's around $5 for 20 teabags. I can dig, clean and roast enough to make probably 200 teabags in one afternoon.

If my math is right, that's about $50 worth of dandelion tea. Maybe not killer wages but not too bad, either, and I don't have to worry about what else is in the dandelion root.

I don't poison or use artificial fertilizer on my backyard, so the dandelion roots there are safe.  We had a mild summer with quite a bit of rain, so I'm looking forward to a big harvest this year.

If you've never tried it, give it a chance. The two links above explain the process.

Hungry for spring!

I dragged out some wild food books over the weekend and spent some time looking through them, finding a few recipes to try this spring and summer, as well as deciding to try a couple of "weeds" that I've not eaten before. It was a good way to spend an otherwise boring winter afternoon, but it really got me fired up for spring!

Dandelions will be in grave danger this year, I can tell you. I'm so looking forward to fresh greens and more. One of the books I rediscovered is "Dandelion Celebration" by Peter Gail. Curious, I tried to track him down and actually found a blog he wrote, but the last entry was in April of last year. I'm hoping that he just got busy with other things and will return soon.

That little book was what really got me started on dandelions and I'm still learning about them. Not only can you eat the leaves as cooked greens, you can eat them raw in a salad or sandwich. You can steam the buds and eat them with butter, fritter the flower heads or add the flowers to cookie dough... make dandelion coffee and, of course, dandelion wine. All for free (how frugal is that??)

Then you can sprout the seeds for a midwinter green, or you can bring in a plant or two and have greens year 'round. Dig the roots for a cooked vegetable, too.

And so my weekend went... and so I'm hungry for all those good, free, wild foods that won't grow here just yet.

If you haven't tried wild foods, do yourself and your food budget a favor and try dandelions this spring. You might be able to find a copy of Peter Gail's book at a library, but if you can't, there are many dandelion recipes on the internet. Just remember to not gather them from lawns or fields that have been sprayed with herbicides or pesticides or that are close to highways or busy streets.

Have you had any experience with dandelions or other wild foods? I'd love to learn more!

How does your wild garden grow?

This is proving to be an interesting year! Already, some of the "weeds" in my back yard are going to seed. Lambsquarter and amaranth will start over if I allow the seeds to fall (IF we don't have an early fall), and purslane is edible even after it's gone to seed, but it's still disturbing. Do they know something we don't?


The dandelions are doing very well this year under the plum tree. I never have it mowed back there so that I can dig the roots for dandelion coffee. This year I intend to eat some of the roots as vegetables. I haven't done that yet because I wanted enough to make coffee.

It looks like I'll have enough to do both this year!

Semi-wild: Jerusalem artichokes. If you've never tried this, and you have a little spot you can give them, do it. They're so good in the fall and winter when other things aren't so fresh or crispy and they do spread on their own. I have a good stand of them and I know there were areas that I dug all of them out (I thought, anyway!).

I put some peelings from them in the compost and guess what's growing there now? Yep... "almost" weeds. :)

New Year musings

I was just looking through some Pinterest posts, vintage, antiques, retro... and I found many things that I have and still use. What does that make me? Old fashioned? An oddball? Or... maybe frugal?

I don't know. I saw a manual clamp on meat grinder. I have one downstairs that hasn't been used for awhile but if I need it, I know where it is. I saw a coffee grinder - manual, of course. I have one and use it regularly. I don't drink coffee, but I make a coffee like drink from dandelion roots and sometimes grains.

I saw a Cosco red step stool/chair. I have one, thanks to my son and daughter in law.
Old fashioned Christmas candy, of course. I have some left from Christmas and some stashed away for next year.
Tinsel "icycles" for the tree. I have a box and used some last year.
Hot water bottle - I gave one away recently, preferring to use 2 liter plastic bottles because you don't have to get the water as hot and they last a long time. Good for cold feet, in bed or out.

I have an old fashioned egg beater, where you turn the handle and it turns the beaters. I have a pencil sharpener mounted on the corner of a bookshelf, where you turn the handle and it turns the blades. I even own a wringer washer.

"Time saving" appliances can cut us off from the real world. What's the satisfaction of sharpening a pencil if it's done so fast and with so little effort than you can ruin a pencil in just a moment? Or beating eggs in a mixer where you don't even have to pay attention.

I know... our grandparents and great grandparents probably thought the same thing when horseless carriages were introduced. And they were right. We ride the skies and have no idea what's beneath us. We ride in air conditioned or heated vehicles at ridiculous speeds and know nothing of what goes past us in seconds.

I'm not trying to guilt anyone into giving up anything - that's the way the world runs now - but this year, why not take the time to do something with your hands? See how it feels to turn an old fashioned ice cream maker this summer. Sew something by hand instead of a sewing machine.

I think that's what is meant by the phrase "smell the roses." 

Here Comes Peter Cottontail! It's Nearly Easter

Hopping down the bunny trail...
Hippety, hoppety, Easter's on its way!

And so it is. Easter is early this year, so if you'd like to do something a little different, it's time to get started. I'm making Easter baskets and remembering those nights before Easter when the kids were little when we used to color eggs. What a mess it made! It was fun, though. I didn't realize at the time how much more fun dying eggs with natural foods could be. 


If you want to try dying Easter eggs without having to buy the dye, here is what I finally figured out. First, you have to start now to save the various foodstuffs in time.

• Get your Easter eggs ready to dye by washing in mild soap and warm water to remove any 'sealer' or residue.
  Longer boiling or soaking will make the color deeper.
• Eggs keep better the longer they're boiled, anyway, and a half hour won't hurt them, texture or taste wise.
• Use a teaspoon of vinegar to help set the dye in these. Add it at the same time you add the egg.
• Make designs on eggs with plain crayons before coloring. You don't need a special clear wax crayon to decorate Easter eggs.

Easter egg colors and how to get them:

• Light green - Save the water from canned or fresh cooked spinach and boil eggs in it, or pick a few dandelion leaves to boil them in.
• Pale Yellow - Add carrot tops, celery seed or orange peel to water for boiling eggs.
• Deep Yellow - Put ground turmeric in the water with boiling eggs, or use yellow onion skins to dye them a deep yellow.
• Orange - Yellow onion skins, at least two cups full. Boil them for a half hour, then add eggs and boil until the eggs are done. If you don't have many, boil what you have in a small pan, with just enough water to cover an egg.
• Tan - Coffee or tea.
• Blue - Red cabbage leaves will dye eggs blue. Boil leaves in water, then use the cool liquid to dye boiled eggs. Or let the eggs set in juice drained from canned blueberries.
• Pink - Use the liquid from canned or pickled beets, or boil along with a fresh beet, or chopped rhubarb stalks, red onion skins. Beets make an especially pretty Easter color.
• Lavendar - Purple grape juice makes a good dye for a pretty Easter color.
• Red - Red onion skins. This takes at least three cups full to a quart of water and you have to soak the eggs in it for a half hour or so after boiling. Red is a hard color to create with natural dyes.
• Bright Yellow - Inner bark of apple tree bark. Scrape the bark into a pot of water and boil for a half hour or so. Don't use vinegar in this, but add a half teaspoon of alum to each quart when cool, to bring out the color. 

Experiment and have fun. As long as it's a food or food safe product, you don't have to worry about it hurting the Easter egg or the eater thereof!