"john" wrote in message
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John R. Carroll wrote:
Ed Huntress wrote:

"John R. Carroll" wrote in
message ...

Ed Huntress wrote:

"Tom Gardner" wrote in message
m...

snip

I have Dandelions every year in my front yard, I should stop
weeding, treating and killing them and just accept them as them
like death and taxes?

First, pick the young leaves in the spring and use them in salad.
They're really tasty and they give salad a nice tang. In Italian
neighborhoods around here you pay good money for cultivated ones.
The ones in your yard are just as good.

When they get a little older, pick the leaves and wash them well,
and then steam or boil them. They're better than spinach.

Later in the season you can dig up the plant and cut off both the
leaves and the root, leaving a little junction the size of a marble
("hearts of dandelion"). These are a real delicacy, much like
artichoke hearts. Be warned, though: you have to wash the hell out
of them to get the sand out. Steam or boil.

Finally, if you're a real cheapskate, or curious, or if you like
chicory in your coffee, dig up the roots, scrub them well, and then
roast them until they're fairly dark, just barely lighter than
commercially roasted coffee. Grind up the roots and use like coffee.
Dandelion is a close relative of chicory.

LMAO,
You bet me to it Ed.
My grandfather did ALL of those things.
He wouldn't have understood anyone throwing away perfectly good food.

We would have gotten along, I'll bet. Maybe he knew how to make
arrowhead roots taste like something. There are so many of them, and
they're so easy to get out of the muck, that it's a shame they don't
have more flavor.

I'll bet I could have shown him how to get the good part out of a
surf clam, too. Nobody eats those things, but they're delicious if
you know what to do with them. Oh, and blowfish...g


My Grandmother and Grandfather on my Moms side were first generation
Italian
immigrants Ed.
I don't know about clams or blowfish but where I saw their farm as a
place
that raised corn they saw in as natures Deli G




Blowfish are the tastiest fish I have ever eaten. Just make sure you
don't cut into the abdominal cavity. I was shown how to cut juxt the
backs off of them.

If they showed you the *really* slick way to do it, you make just one cut
and the entire piece of meat pops out in one hand, while the rest of the
fish, guts and all, stays in the other. We used to have cleaning contests
for those things and I could do 25 in less than three minutes. They're the
shmoos of the sea. g When there are a lot of them around and they show up
in the fish markets, they often call them "ocean drumsticks." And they do
look like a chicken drumstick when they're dressed -- if chickens had tails,
anyway.

I battered some up and deep fried them once. Pan frying them works too.
Another real good tasting fish is eel or is eel not a fish. Slimy suckers
but get beyond the slime and screwing your fishing line up, they taste
almost as good as blowfish.

Cut them into sections about 6 inches long and skewer them on a hotdog
stick; cook over an open fire. Most of the fat burns off that way, and
they're delicious.

--
Ed Huntress