Yes you read that title right. Fried dandelions. Google this, it’s a real thing.
Food.com, all recipes, old farmers almanac, even Martha Stewart has a fried dandelion recipe.
You can also eat fried pumpkin blossoms, if you’re rich enough to have them.
I don’t think I’ll be harvesting and frying our weeds anytime soon. But man do I love to listen to my father-in-law talk about his life. And being married to Tanner has taught me several things, the first being I am not nearly as country as I thought I once was.
When we first met he called me a city girl and I scoffed because my home town of Stow, Ohio is surrounded by farms. It’s no Cleveland metropolis by any means. But compared to Greensburg Indiana? Oh I’m for sure a city girl.
My mother-in-law told me about how they ate bologna gravy growing up. I asked if she was serious. Dead pan serious, apparently it too is delicious like the fried dandelions.
Don’t get me wrong I love a good view of rolling country, farmland, corn growing tall, a storm rolling in over fields of crops. I can get behind the slow pace and a day of front porch sitting just watching the sun slowly make its way across the sky.
But the gnats that come with manure? The frog legs at the local buffet? The 40 minute trip to the only grocery store in town? The mice and spiders inside? (My father-in-law has some guy named Chandler that takes care of his mouse traps I guess I could find myself a Chandler if push came to shove) Septic systems instead of city water? Limited run routes because literally every road is one mile to the next intersection (unless you want to run forever on a 55mph road that’s big enough for 1.5 cars or one very large combine)? These aspects of country living are not as appealing as the ones mentioned above them.
I can jump on board with a farmhouse style home. I can do a large lot. I might maybe be able to handle a single goat. No, nope, goats poop little pellets wherever they please. I can handle a cat with a litter box.
But it just about stops there. The only plant I’ve managed to not kill is mint, and despite my best efforts to kill the mint in my flower beds it just keeps coming back. So crop farming is not a lifestyle we will ever adopt.
I have a hard enough time keeping my four children alive, fed, happy and regularly in attendance to well child visits. I can’t also juggle other living creatures requiring my attention as well,
I might be willing to live N E X T to a farm to sort of get the best of both worlds. Except let’s circle back to the smell of fertilizer, or animals in general. . . I’m definitely a city girl.
Tanner has big “plans” of owning a farm one day, with goats to eat the grass so we won’t have to mow, hogs to raise and slaughter, chickens and so on. This will most likely play out as his mid-life crisis pending a military retirement that actually looks more like a lost, retired soldier looking for his next adventure picking dandelions to fry in a skillet in the hopes of feeling like the country boy he once was.
I imagine it playing out like the time he wanted to feel like a true country fisherman and brought back his catch from his deep sea fishing venture. He proceeded to fillet the fish in our backyard and bring it in to fry it in our kitchen leaving behind the most horrendous smell for my 7 month pregnant nose to inhale for the following 3 HOURS. Remember, I am a city girl so that fishy, old salt water smell was not one that had me reminiscing of my childhood or anything worth remembering.
Who knows though, maybe one day we will own a farm? One that harvests great smelling things, like flowers and we will pay someone to do the growing part so I don’t kill them by looking at them too long (I’m so bad at gardening I’m beyond merely having a “black thumb” it’s gone to my eyes, possibly my breath, plants don’t enjoy my presence).
Rest assured neighbors, this mom will not be sending her children out to harvest your weeds and I won’t show up at your door step with a parcel of fried dandelions wrapped delicately with lace and twine as gesture of kindness. I’ll stick to the homemade cookies. I’d be lying though if I said my kids will never pick your weeds and hand them to me in bundles demanding they be placed in a vase and kept on our table for the next week.
Although, I suppose frying them may be more useful in the long run. . .
I don’t know that I’ll be brave enough to try that though.
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