30 Days Wild | Day 8 - munching on Dandelions

For day 8 of 30 Days Wild, I wanted to nibble on some wild ingredients that I'd found in nature. As I didn't really have time to go off foraging anywhere (still revising!) I had a look in our garden, which is fortunately heaving with Dandelions. Although my plant ID skills are slowly improving, there's only a few which I know to be edible that I'd definitely be confident actually eating - gotta be careful! However I didn't think I could go far wrong with Dandelion :o) I'd already made a salad for my lunch so it was just a matter of washing and adding the Dandelions to it.

Having an exciting lunch box makes lunch more fun.

Salad of potato, black beans, anchovies, carrot, celery, tomato, Dandelion, olive oil, lemon juice and black pepper.

It turns out the flavour of Dandelion leaves is not particularly to my taste! They are quite bitter, luckily the strong flavour of anchovies in my salad balanced it out somewhat, but I'm not sure I will eat Dandelion again. However I have enjoyed various other leaves a lot more when I've briefly tried them while out birding, e.g. Wild Garlic, Wood Sorrel, Garlic Mustard.....foraging for wild ingredients is something I'd like to get more into, after all who doesn't like free food? When I have a bit more free time I am going to peruse my copy of 'Food for Free' more extensively. For now though here is the start of the section on Dandelion....

Can't believe I've been calling it Dandelion all these years, when I could have been calling it Bum-pipe, Stink Davine or Lion's Teeth....what a wasted opportunity!