Our lawn is a riot of dandelions. When the first one came out, I was so pleased at this sign of spring that I went up and petted its little furry flower, and welcomed it to the world. It stayed, and brought friends.
barry_macneil has been out picking dandelion flowers whenever he can for a while now, to avoid the seeds spreading, bit they keep sending up more and more flowers.
I have a solution! It's not going to rid the lawn of dandelions, but at least a few will never be seeds, and we may look at the remaining flowers with hunger, not loathing.
Dandelion FrittersPick a bunch of dandelion flowers, flowerheads only.
Mix 1 egg and 1 cup of milk, and then mix in 1 c flour.
Dip flowers in batter, fry in oil (at least 1 cm deep) flower-side down until browned then stem-side.
Sprinkle with powdered sugar.
They're really good! The flowers have a little bit of sweetness to them, and besides, almost anything fried in batter is good. Another option is to just take the dandelion petals and put them in regular pancake batter.
I found the recipe here: <http://www.learningherbs.com/herbalbranch6.html>, after reading in my current-most-favourite gardening book about the joys of dandelions.