Just approximately a month after First Washday, we celebrated some different spring milestone: First Picking, or the number one meal of the 12 months to comprise some thing harvested from our very own backyard. If you determined overdue March appears awfully early to be harvesting some thing from the lawn, you are pretty proper; our lawn beds are nevertheless empty, besides for a few holdovers from remaining year (a cussed parsley plant and some leeks that sooner or later determined to germinate this spring when I'd given them up for lost). Even our perennial flowers, asparagus and rhubarb, have best simply all began to expose their heads of their separate little beds, and it will probable be some weeks as a minimum before any of them are prepared to select.
No, the edibles harvested from the backyard for final night time time's dinner had been no longer virtually planted there; they grew up all by using manner of themselves. In reality, they're in all likelihood developing on your outdoor, too, whether or now not you want them to or now not. I'm referring, of direction, to the lowly and much-maligned dandelion. This hard little weed is the bane of many gardeners because it will grow everywhere and is almost not viable to get rid of. However, due to the fact the saying is going, whilst existence offers you lemons, make lemonade?And while your lawn offers you dandelions, make salad.
Dandelion greens are purported to be at their first-class this time of year, while they may be young and smooth. Picking them is tough, because of the reality in case your yard is whatever like ours, the dandelions are jumbled together on the ground with twigs and crabgrass and fallen leaves, all of which you need to pick out of the dandelion leaves in advance than you can use them. The veggies also pop out protected in dust, so you have to wash them very thoroughly. I positioned all of them in a big bowl of water after which genuinely tired and changed the water three instances earlier than I considered them smooth sufficient to eat. I additionally needed to cast off the roots, the blossoms (you could consume those, but it's a one-of-a-kind recipe) and the harder stems. However, as soon as you've got completed all this prep art work, the actual cooking is pretty clean. We used a recipe gleaned from Mother Earth News, although it's essentially most effective a version at the large recipe for veggies that looks in Mountain Cooking, a collection of conventional recipes from Appalachia:
Chop 4 slices of bacon (in our case, certified humane bacon from Trader Joe's) and fry it until crisp. Pour off all however a tablespoon of the drippings (Note: if you do not consume bacon at all, you could simply warmness up a tablespoon of olive oil) and add a diced red onion, or more than one chopped scallions, to the skillet. Stir in 2 teaspoons of brown sugar and multiple tablespoons of cider vinegar, then pour the latest dressing over your vegetables to wilt them. Toss, and upload salt and pepper to flavor.
And there you have got it: smooth, herbal, extraordinarily community (less than 100 feet), seasonal veggies without price. Can't get greater ecofrugal than that.
